The Scar Project

Within the framework of the France-Quebec exchanges program, Géographies variables.

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In 2005 Nadia Myre began a long-term exploration of how people describe their pain, hurt, healing, and scars with a needle and thread, and paper and pen. What emerged was The Scar Project, a viewer participatory open-lab/installation/exhibition where individuals could sit and ‘sew their wounds’, literal or metaphorical, on one of the canvases provided, and recount whether or not their scars could heal. This work, which consists of close to 500 scarred and sewn canvases and accompanying stories, documents a multitude of voices from all walks of life and age ranges. Because of this, The Scar Project shows the increasing complexity of peoples’ self understanding at different stages of their development, and the iconic similarities of experience that recur throughout life. Using the scars and stories as source material, Nadia Myre will create an interactive website that mines the data for similarities. By mapping and linking frequency of word usage and recurring symbols, Nadia Myre is hoping to illustrate the connecting emotional threads that run through our collective psychological landscapes.

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