Photo Credit: Justin Aranha

Erika DeFreitas’s interdisciplinary practice includes performance, photography, video, installation, textiles, drawing and writing. Placing emphasis on gesture, process, the body, documentation and paranormal phenomena, DeFreitas mines concepts of loss, post-memory, legacy and objecthood. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally including: Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery; Platform Centre for Photographic and Digital Arts, Winnipeg; Gallery TPW, Toronto; Project Row Houses and the Museum of African American Culture, Houston; Fort Worth Contemporary Arts; and Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita. DeFreitas holds a Master of Visual Studies from the University of Toronto.​

Artist Statement

My interdisciplinary practice draws on both personal and cultural histories to investigate the qualities of absence and presence, which comes from my curiosity with the various forms of loss one encounters, and a fear of the loss one anticipates. I explore the dichotomy of absence and presence with the use of a variety of mediums; placing an emphasis on process, gesture, and documentation – all relating to ways of affirming one’s presence. What has evolved in my investigation is a playful obsession to find ways to make the impermanent permanent, or to engage in ritualistic acts with the hopes of regaining what is lost. A key component in my practice involves embracing the unpredictability of loss, while conceptually developing ways to highlight different aspects of loss in a contemporary context.