Grape Soda in the Parking Lot gives voice to Taqralik Patridge as she taps into the memories of her childhood. By animating paintings, Patridge leans into the pain of her past, especially through the lens of her grandmother’s Scottish Gaelic and her father’s Inuktitut language that were lost due to the influence of the English.
Directed by Megan Kyak-Monteith, Grape Soda in the Parking Lot fully leans into the challenges of memory and the ways that our mind deals with loss. For Patridge, the mind is a constantly shifting storyteller, leading her to question what it means to own the suffering of our past. This belief plays into her use of animation which frames itself as an ambiguous artistic endeavour. Each brush stroke further builds up the pieces of her fragmented memories while, at the same time, leaving the image blurry enough to keep it inauthentic. These are the stories of her past and the feelings that come with them are difficult for her to quantify.
But are they hers?
Part of the mystery inherent to Grape Soda is the way that it challenges Patridge about her feelings of loss, especially towards their cultures. Patridge recognizes the damage that has been done at the hands of the English language but wrestles with how her own experience of that cost affects her now. In this way, she leans into her past while still remaining emotionally present at the same time.
Grape Soda in the Parking Lot is playing at ImagiNATIVE ’23. For more details, click here.
