In October 2023, at the start of her McLuhan House residency, Erika presented the project: Tell Me What You’re Searching For And I’ll Help You Look. Members of the public and surrounding communities were invited to write a note responding to the prompt: tell me what you’re searching for and I’ll help you look. In exchange for the hand written notes, the artist gifted each participant with a unique monoprint painting. Twenty-five visitors participated in the ritual, leaving behind twenty-five notes.

Throughout the remaining months of the residency Erika created twenty-five artworks that translated each note. Through a process of creating a system where each letter is assigned a colour, the text from each note was re-written into a visual composition. This new body of work, titled What I Found While Searching, represents a collaborative search for meaning between the artist and each viewer, as well as across a community of friends, family and strangers that is created through a joint experience of making and sharing art.

On June 15th, 2024, at the close of my residency, she invited the participants of the ritual as well any other members of the public to return to the McLuhan House studio to view the body of work translated from the notes collected in October. This presentation marked the completion of the year-long project, exploring themes of language, translation, ritual, religion and community.