MURKY BODIES
MURKY BODIES
(2020)
“The unseen is what will undo us, not so much what is out of sight but what we refuse to see.” Maureen Hynes, Sotto Voce, 2019
It has come to this... Climate Change. Climate Crisis. Climate Emergency.
In September 2019 the Category 5 Hurricane Dorian churned over the northern islands of the Bahamas. After devastating Abaco, its furious trajectory propelled it to Grand Bahama Island (where I spent my teenage years). For over twenty-four relentless hours, the island was deluged by winds of 295 km/hr, water surges and catastrophic flooding.
Viewed through the various lenses and media of BioArt and Science Fiction, Murky Bodies is a series of installations that speculate on the entangled ways in which humans, plants, animals and microorganisms are struggling to co-exist in a world confronting a warming climate. The artworks in the exhibit draw attention to the destabilization of these permeable bodies by flooding, Cholera, and other diseases. Climate Change is now a point of disruptive convergence, where thresholds between interior and exterior bodies and borders are continuously being breached and in a constant exchange with a shifting and changing environment.
Blurring the boundaries between human and non-human ecologies, Murky Bodies conveys the way that human intervention and natural transformation generate new landscapes and new forms of hybrid life. Can we dare to move beyond an apocalyptic endpoint and envision a hopeful future?
Developed as Artist-in-Residence, in conjunction with Ryan Hickey, Santiago Campuzano, Rahna Rasouli and Andrew Pelling at the Pelling Laboratory for Augmented Biology, University of Ottawa. Technical assistance from Rob Cruickshank & Cleo Sallis-Parchet at InterAccess, Toronto. Portraits include the scientists at the Pelling Laboratory and the environmentalists at the Toronto Environmental Alliance.
Interview by Winging It Productions (Charles Hackbarth & Marc Cohen) February 2020 - link here
Murky Bodies was produced with the support of the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council.
