M Gallery, CICA Museum
May 17 – 21, 2023
2023.05.17 – 05.21
Prescribed
Prescribed burns mirror preindustrial agricultural practices, in which humans, working in concert with unstoppable natural forces, eke out beneficial relationships. Prescriptions are written in order to heal disrupted landscapes. In Southern Ontario, rare pre-colonial oak & grassland savannahs overcome by non-native pines is one example of an invasion taking place on the fringes of human-scale perception. But these decades- or centuries-old ripples following
disruption are apparent to land stewards as they observe the same wild places season after season. When done at a particular time of year, in the correct conditions, burning grasslands and forest floors can be a powerful implement in holistic ecological restoration.
A static picture of ashen ground is a clear signifier of what came before. In the context of the wild, it is easy to connect it to a forest destroyed. However, as the Forsythias bloom each spring, we see how fire can be used as a dramatic, ephemeral, yet effective tool in gradually re-aligning a body of land to a ‘natural’ state.
Though this series of pictures is, on its surface, a document of prescribed burns, there is something else going on too: trunks mimic torsos, red coveralls remind of flames among trees and grasses. Through intense and fleeting subject matter, the formal relationships made in this project grapple with a deeply-rooted otherness.
