Sigh From the Depths 

Curator: Sarah Joncas’s oil painting, “Sigh From the Depths," presents us with a figure partially submerged in what appears to be water, face tilted upwards. Editor: My first impression is one of melancholic beauty, almost like a modern Ophelia. The muted colors and upward gaze create a feeling of longing and introspection. Curator: Absolutely. The figure's upward gaze could symbolize yearning, a reaching towards something beyond the immediate, almost a form of visual prayer across centuries of iconography. Editor: I read that aspiration somewhat differently, though. To me, her upward tilt also hints at contemporary concerns regarding drowning, the environmental crisis, rising sea levels, the feeling of powerlessness. Her gaze isn’t necessarily directed toward the heavens, but rather towards a poisoned atmosphere. Curator: An interesting counterpoint, given those cloudlike emanations. Those can be read as psychic residue, an atmospheric expression of suppressed feeling. Perhaps it shows personal sorrow merging with ecological anxiety. Editor: Precisely! It visualizes the individual being overwhelmed by these very contemporary global challenges. I see in it commentary on the burden disproportionately placed on women, often forced to metabolize and express collective emotions on environmental breakdown. Curator: Joncas's use of smooth, almost airbrushed, oil paint reinforces the dreamlike quality and draws the viewer closer to the subject's vulnerability. This, perhaps, makes us want to identify more with the figure. Editor: I think you are right. And because the water obscures half of the figure, that enhances that emotional charge. The visual division may hint to the separation of mind and body, and also between the conscious and the unconscious state. Curator: So, despite its beauty, it feels profoundly unsettling. The conventional symbolic power of water may become undone as it shifts, via the gaze of the subject, into one of dread. Editor: This tension – this very uncomfortable tension–between aesthetic appeal and sociopolitical disquiet feels utterly crucial in “Sigh From the Depths". Curator: Ultimately, Joncas prompts us to look both outward at the world's ills, and inward to confront our feelings of despair and grief. Editor: Leaving us to consider our own positions within such a vast, and increasingly imperiled, ecosystem.