Dawit L. Petros on Migration, Memory and the Politics of Looking

Eritrean-born artist Dawit L. Petros presents 'From the Edge of the Horizon,' a survey exhibition spanning photography, video, sculpture, and installation across Remai Modern and College Art Galleries in Saskatoon from September 5, 2025 to March 8, 2026. The exhibition brings together works created over twenty-two years, exploring entangled histories of migration, colonialism, and belonging. Petros, whose family arrived in Saskatoon as refugees in the early 1980s, returns to the city where his visual language was formed. The two-venue structure mirrors the fragmented experience of displacement. Petros discusses his resistance to fixed identities, the politics of visibility, and his strategy of concealment in portraiture as a refusal of the camera's claim to knowledge. He emphasizes that visibility is never neutral, and that photography is implicated in colonial documentation and control. Works like 'The Stranger's Notebook' approach migration with subtlety, aiming to 'speak nearby' subjects without appropriating their voices. The exhibition lingers in spaces between departure and arrival, visibility and concealment.