HOSTA

Hosta (2024) has grown out of the series, The Lake (2016-present). During the lockdown phase of the COVID pandemic, my family sheltered at a lake cabin that has multigenerational significance to my extended family. Located in a somewhat remote location, being there has always felt like an experience removed from regular life, but during the pandemic, it felt isolated to a degree I’d never experienced, a psychological as well as geographical sequestration. Around the same time, Canadian wildfire smoke caused by climate change began to engulf what had hitherto been a refuge. Nearly five years later, the fires are still not out, in the winter smouldering underground as “zombie” fires until the snow melts, after which they blaze all over again. The impetus for The Lake series has always been an exploration of the meaning and significance of place, and the connection points between people and their natural environment, but within the context of these dual crises, a deadly virus - creating invisible but real, new borders around a landscape that had hitherto felt open and limitless – and unbreathable air – new questions arose within the project.

Shot over the course of three years, Hosta is the study of a caged plant, the cage serving both as a subject and element of process, providing the structure for the handmade pinhole cameras used to make long exposures of the plant within it. Shot in extreme close-up, the hosta’s botanical forms invite comparisons with the human body, evoking the biological interconnectedness between humans and nature, and exploring the borderline between dualities such as protection and endangerment, intimacy and intrusiveness, trust and paranoia, self and other.