Erika DeFreitas’ practice explores the dichotomies of absence and presence and ephemerality and permanence through textile, performance, and documentation. Her project, and every tear is from the other, comprises forty embroidered tissues that she has used to wipe her tears. The artist’s

tear marks are delicately outlined with stitches, as though to preserve and memorialize the momentary affect of crying. As curator Lauren Fournier writes in her curatorial essay for The Sustenance Rite: “The tissue becomes evidence of a scene, the site of an event that maybe no one else witnessed, and an act that might seem ephemeral and elusive after the fact.” The physicality of stitching itself signifies a labour of love while also standing in for healing or repair. Just as the ritual of crying may have a cathartic effect, so too does the process of stitching.