While at Empire of Dirt Residency most of my time was spent alone in the forest, which was very still despite being fully alive. I would regularly get a little lost in the woods, magnifying any feelings of vulnerability that arose. This led me to think about perception, and how fear and trauma (along with epigenetics) effect the way that our bodies perceive the world, reminded that what we perceive through our senses is also conditioned by our culture (noting that mainstream culture is still entrenched in a colonial and anthropocentric system among other destructive isms and antagonistic binaries).
So I began to make photographic work surrounding my own rather vulnerable body in the forest, the performing of which allowed me to feel the very intimate and visceral experience of being a material continuation of the landscape I was now a part of.
These particular works were also influenced by my middle age and feeling my body slowly make its turn back toward the earth.The forest floor defies any western linear paradigm. Birth, growth, decline, death, and decay, are all happening in the forest simultaneously, and there seems to be no such thing as ‘dead’. I wanted to know where and how I might fit into all of this, compelled to feel the forest floor against my body as it begins its own natural decline … to sense the physical boundaries between my own flesh and the earth. I wanted to do all this while acknowledging the fact that I am a very small material part of the earth and my body will eventually return to it. This is a much slower dance than I have been studying in rivers and wetland streams, but similar in theme … another small movement within a larger system.
I will be exhibiting the full body of work for the 2022 Exposure Festival at Kaffeeklatsch in Calgary from January 30-March 26th 2022 thanks to the support from Calgary Arts Development.
Kaffeeklatsch 1205 1st Street SW
Kaffeeklatsch follows the City's Vaccine Passport Bylaw, meaning masks are required when not seated at your own table with all attendees requiring proof of vaccination.