Being Ambulant with Corona Walker

Abstract

ABSTRACT Corona Walker lived and died in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia at the end of the 19th century. Her headstone records that she died on 11 January 1889, at the age of 18 years, coincidentally less than a year before the Russian Influenza pandemic. There is no memoir, diary, obituary or other first-hand account to be found for her. Walking and writing in the neighbourhoods of her resting place is a method of simultaneously imagining the past and bringing Corona into the present. In this speculative biography, the imagined female protagonist assembles, disassemblesand reassembles as she moves through the city. This work of research creation is situated within spatial, walking-based visual arts practices and is grounded in multisensory experiences of sites, weathers and bodies. The compassionate imagining of Corona Walker affords glimpses of a future to be realised in the aftermath of tragedy.