Tundra Kids
My first impressions were tactile because each page is a different size and it was difficult to decipher where it began and where it ended. Was it upside down? I was intrigued enough by the colour photographs of nosebleeds, graffiti, Simpsons video captures, and cropped meat that I continued to explore. The unaccredited story also blurs the boundaries between beginning and ending. These are choppy outtakes from the eyes of 5 year-old Poppy, coping with the embarrassment of her immigrant parents, Dr. and Mrs. K, survivors of war. The description of her mother failing to learn to ride a bike is an especially graceful piece of writing. Poppy recites lessons for her bullying father. Her mother has a shoe fetish but Poppy suspects she may be beautiful under her lab coat. The story builds to a climactic brutal scene of familial dysfunction. On the front/back is a pouch with a passport collage – images stylistically angular, urban, and displaced. Someone is squished inside a newspaper box looking out. The plastic spine provides a homespun photo album feel but this album is found, like a treasured piece of litter, snagged in your brain. (AB)
monthly magazine, $7, DM, 274 Holmwood Ave., Ottawa, ON, K1S 2P9