Just off bustling Dupont Street is United Contemporary Gallery, exhibiting Jake Kimble’s series “Make Yourself at Home”, an exciting feature in this year’s CONTACT Photography Festival. It’s a modest space with inviting and warm staff who introduce the artist with admiration and pride. This is Kimble’s first solo exhibition in Toronto.
Jake Kimble, a burgeoning photographer and graduate of Vancouver’s Emily Carr University of Art + Design, has cleverly woven together a series of photographs, each section exploring the intricacies of the relationship to one’s home. While he lives in Vancouver now, he’s always felt the magnetic pull back to his childhood home in the Northwest Territories. After experiencing two life-altering tragedies – first, the 2023 wildfires that destroyed most of his community and then his brother tragically passed away in a car accident – he sought to process his grief and strive to heal through artistic expression. “Make Yourself at Home” is a show of resilience – of connection. In the artist’s note, Kimble says, “I’m finding myself in need of not only repairing but rebuilding,” and the bittersweet process is chronicled on the white walls of the gallery.
Installation view of Jake Kimble, Make Yourself At Home, 2023, digital photo composites
It is a relatable feeling: losing someone or something close to us requires work to begin recovering. It can be a grievous process, heavy and daunting. Yet Kimble embraces the weight with humour, employing his ‘funny bone’ in his work to add levity. Take, for instance, Heavy Operator Equipment (H.O.E.), which features a nude Kimble posing on a large tractor wheel. The tongue-in-cheek title speaks to his humour, and the image speaks to themes of contrast and unity. The hard, unyielding metal and solid rubber juxtaposed with the soft and lithe posture of Kimble’s body should not work as well as it does. Yet somehow, despite the duality, the tractor and man are unified – they are as one, both creatures of home.
Jake Kimble, Heavy Operator Equipment (H.O.E.), 2023, Archival Pigment Print, 40 x 40 in.
Beside it on the gallery’s wall, in a similar maple frame, is When the Lights Come On That Means It’s Time To Come Home, a visually stunning photograph of Kimble and the Northern Lights. In this image, he has tamed the ever-morphing aurora borealis while rendering himself in constant movement, dancing with and reaching for the lights of his home’s backyard. The theme of physical, mental, and spiritual unity with his home emerges in this triad of photos, with the third being potentially the most resonant. Bath Time shows a face-down Kimble in crisp and undisturbed snow. As though he has readily fallen into its cold embrace, he is purified and cleansed in the mid-winter snows.
Jake Kimble, When the Lights Come On That Means It’s Time To Come Home, 2023, Archival pigment print, 40 x 40 in.
Adjacent to the gallery’s entrance is another triad, with its theme of home centred on physical settings. In this excerpt of photographs, the protagonist is Enterprise (the hamlet in which the photographer’s community is located) near the border of Alberta along the Hay River. Home Sweet Home captures a snow dune, the saturated pink reflecting a setting sun offset by the deep blue of the darkening sky. It’s a striking piece, with its colour and depth rendered almost reverently by Kimble. 12’4” features a group of trees standing strong, their limbs made colossal by the green and violet northern lights stretching across the star-speckled sky. Nowhere in the light-polluted suburban and urban areas of Southern Ontario can one see the night like this. Finally, Playing with the Ground and the Lake contrasts the playground’s primary colours against the stark white of the snow and sky. These are glimpses into the details that make Kimble’s home so unique. How difficult it must have been to lose it; how heartening to have reclaimed it.
Jake Kimble, Home Sweet Home (left) and 12’4” (right); both 2023, Archival pigment print, 22 x 22 in
Switching walls, the immediate draw is a diptych of the artist and his grandmother in DNA Holy You Ever Act Like Granny. The resemblance is obvious: both have kind and inquisitive eyes, with a humorous glint that catches the light in Kimble’s grandmother’s home. The ‘funny bone’ mentioned can be found here too. The hands in each image belong to the other – the two were playing when this was taken, experimenting with perspective and their alikeness.
Jake Kimble, DNA Holy You Ever Act Like Granny, 2023, Archival pigment print, 25 x 39 in.
Similarly, in the triptych Setsune, ?ama, Sekui, Kimble dons the identities of his grandmother, mother, and self by wearing their coats and photographing himself from behind. Aaccording to the artist, the three of them cannot be told apart from the back. His family is clearly synonymous with home – they are the safety and stability only home can provide.
Jake Kimble, Setsune, ?ama, Sekui, 2023, Archival pigment print, 20 x 20 in
The last section invites us into Kimble’s past, his Chipewyan ancestry. Funny Looking Raven, which features Kimble donning an imagined ceremonial Chipewyan shawl, draws inspiration from artist Cheyenne Rain LeGrande, whose artwork aims to bring her ancestors along with her. Kimble, here, with his outstretched arms and makeshift shawl spreading across his back like a wingspan, seems to be embracing his home: both the physical surroundings of his present and the cultural visualizations of his tribe’s past.
Jake Kimble, Funny Looking Raven, 2023, Archival pigment print, 25 x 36 in.
This exhibition invites the viewer to process the grief of loss alongside the artist while also encouraging laughter, a key element in any healing journey.
Elin MacRae
Images are courtesy of United Contemporary Gallery.
*Exhibition information: Jake Kimble, Make Yourself at Home, April 4 – May 11, 2024, United Contemporary Gallery, #22, 1444 Dupont Street, Toronto. Gallery hours: Wed – Sat 11 am – 6 pm.
The exhibition is part of CONTACT Photography Festival.