HO, SF

A Solemn Clinic
Launched November 19, 2025

There is a moment near the end of the incomplete documentation of Michael Fernandes’ Angelic Harp where the book that he is reading from, The Real World of Fairies, describes a coffee tree transplanted to a garden in California. This struck me as a very interesting anecdote. Michael is a very good storyteller. I remember one time he told me about a tree that saved his life. Also, although it is not recorded on video, in Natalie Loveless’ brief account of Michael’s performance, she mentions that he closed his performance with the sentence: It is not political, spoken “almost as an afterthought.”

As someone who orients myself quite explicitly around politics, the phrase It is not political stayed with me. As a counterpoint to Michael’s work, I thought I should read some Frantz Fanon rather than a book about fairies. At first I couldn’t really explain why specifically Fanon, except that my friends like his writing and he feels especially important to read at this time. As I spent the summer with The Rebel’s Clinic, Adam Shatz’s biography of Fanon, with Fanon’s book The Wretched of the Earth, and with some coffee plants that I bought at a local gardening store, it occurred to me that as well as being a writer, Fanon was also a kind of doctor. For me, the work that he was doing in the context of the Algerian War has a strong relationship to the work of the fairies in that garden in California.

Near the end of the summer I received an invitation to go on a trip that also felt similar to the work of Fanon and of fairies. I brought one of the coffee plants with me. Sadly, I was not careful enough on this trip, and the plant got a bit too cold. It is still alive and hopefully repairing, but I feel pretty bad about it. The work I produced from this trip is reminiscent of Doing Things with Strangers, the other performance of Michael’s catalogued in 7a*11d’s archives, but with a bit more documentation. We were asked not to take photos during the trip, so the little that is represented here is really pushing the limit of what ought to be seen.

My first encounter with performance art was a class I took with Michael Fernandes and Andrew Forster when I was a student at NSCAD. At the time, I was majoring in photography. At the time, there was a trope that students did for their photo projects that I thought was pretty vapid. You would take an object, like an action figure or a rubber duck, and place it in different environments and take pictures of it. Maybe I am regressing a bit, remembering these student days, but this format seems very funny now, and poignant to take up again.

The work that I made for the 7a*mgr8 residency is in conversation with Michael’s work. To make any sense of it, you need to look at his pieces and then look at my pieces, which is not an entertaining task. I’m not sure if my response is legible, but this feels appropriate. There is a lot of discussion at the moment about opacity as a means of survival. I wonder if Michael feels any allegiance to this tactic, whether consciously or unconsciously. Whatever his intentions, I appreciate that his work requires a different kind of attention and I have tried to hold that line with my own approach.

SF Ho is a porous object. They live on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓ əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ peoples. Operating somewhere between words and whatever words can’t be, their artwork is sustained through feminist methodologies, land-based practices, and grassroots community networks. Ho has presented their art and writing both regionally and internationally through SFU Galleries (Vancouver), Hangar (Lisbon), Art Metropole (Toronto), Agnes Etherington Art Centre (Kingston ON), Galerie oqbo (Berlin), RAM Galleri (Oslo), Oxygen Art Centre (Nelson), Western Front (Vancouver), the University of Toronto’s Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, and the Vancouver Art Gallery. They published a book about love and aliens called George, the Parasite. They’re cultivating a practice of wary sociality, never finishing books, and being sort of boring.

References/Resources

The following references were cited or suggested by SF Ho and Michael Fernandes in their TPAC interview:

The Real World of Fairies: an account of the fairy realm by Theosophist Dora van Gelder Kunz
Frantz Fanon: (1925-1961) psychiatrist, and political philosopher from the French colony of Martinique whose writing is influential in postcolonial studies and critical theory
The Wretched of the Earth: Frantz Fanon’s classic book on colonialism, nationalism, and violence, first published in 1963
Adam Shatz: contemporary U.S. writer and editor
The Rebel’s Clinic: Adam Shatz’s biography of Frantz Fanon
NSCAD: Nova Scotia College of Art and Design
Wonder’neath Open Studio: a neighbourhood all-ages drop-in art-making program in Halifax
I Turn Babies: 2025 exhibition by Michael Fernandes at The Blue Building Gallery, Halifax that includes The Wonder’neath Series(add to me)
6-7: recent viral slang term
Paul Wong: contemporary Canadian interdisciplinary visual and media artist

Additional links suggested by SF Ho:

True Chronicles of the Blida Joinville Psychiatric Hospital in the Last Century, when Dr Frantz Fanon Was Head of the Fifth Ward between 1953 and 1956: 2024 historical dramatization by Algerian director Abdenour Zahzah about Frantz Fanon’s work as a psychiatrist in Algeria between 1953 and 1956, pioneering new social therapies to treat the psychological effects of racism during the decolonization movement
The History of Coffee From Yemen to the World: podcast on the history of coffee by Mokhtar Alkhanshali
“Toronto soy sauce factory shuts down and neighbourhood wonders what’s coming next”: article about the closure of the Toronto factory that produced China Lily soy sauce

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