Terra Incogknita

At the base of everything I do is an interest in things that disappear and reappear. Photographic history and processes weave themselves into my art production along with an interest in theatre, antiquated technologies, materiality and the way an image is created. In Terra Incogknita, I explore relationship to place and habitat through a series of performative videos. The works use the presence of my body in the landscape as both a disruptive character and a camouflaged entity; at times it is obvious where I am in the environment and at other times I become a seamless dissolve. Camouflage No.1 (Rock) utilizes the photographic object to blend into the natural environment. A rock-like cape was produced using a photograph of a rock face in the Healy Creek area of Banff National Park, that was then printed onto inkjet-printable textile and sewn together. I donned the textile and used it to blend into the same rock face in a climbing performance work. In Camouflage No.2 (Water), I use a traditional c-print photograph of the stream in the video to act as my 'camouflage'. I am working with endurance and discomfort by performing in the landscape, as well as exploring the humourous element to the performed act. I am also thinking of traditional patriarchal notions of a perceived relationship between women and nature. In Camouflage No.3 (Boulder/Iceland) I utilize the photograph object to investigate the difference between a lithic and a human sense of time. My embodiment as a boulder within the Icelandic landscape is intended to reference a glacial erratic – a tangible remnant of geologic memory and time within the landscape. The title Terra (earth) + Incogknita (women in disguise) references both the idea of an unknown space in the landscape but also a women concealed. The insertion of the word ‘knit’ within Incognita points to my attempts to interlace myself into each ecosystem through the photographic object. https://terraincogknita.tumblr.com/