Latitude 53

Current

Passing Through | Jason Purcell

in conversation with Kyle Terrence

 

Through conversations and collaborations with artist Kyle Terrence and inspired by his 2019 exhibition and short film ‘Berta Boys, Jason Purcell recasts archetypes of queer Albertan masculinity: namely, the queer kid who can’t quite hold on to it and the man who wears it as a costume. For those who came of age in Alberta during the ‘90s and ‘00s—and perhaps still—covertness and survival are difficult to unstitch from one another; safety, community, and connection, then, were cultivated on the sly, in private spaces.

Passing Through evokes the transitory space of the motel, the movement of needle and thread through material, and for the queer Albertan of a certain age, the practice of eliding accusations of queerness. Through a practice of looking/feeling backward, à la Heather Love, this project recasts the prairie aesthetics of compulsory heteromasculinity with a queer eye toward tenderness, desire, and safety. Maybe, after the lights go out and the sun sets, after the last car exits the lot and the lock is turned on the motel room door, another Alberta comes to exist that we are free to make home in.

 
 


Jason Purcell is a writer, musician, and artist from amiskwacîwâskahikan, Treaty 6 (Edmonton, Alberta), where they are a PhD student in Department of English, Film, and Creative Writing at the University of Alberta. They are the author of Swollening (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022) and Crohnic, (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2025), the latter of which was a finalist for the Robert Kroestch - City of Edmonton Book Prize. Across their work they’re interested in questions of gender, masculinity, and place.

 
Ariana Ozga-Reinecke