This exhibition investigates the transference of memory from one living thing to another. In the same breath documents Nauta and Walinga speaking their most intimate memories to plants, capturing these interactions in a series of silent videos and cyanotype prints. Exploring the possibility that plants can retain memory and hold emotions, cuttings from these plants are distilled, creating scents to accompany the works and offering intimate possibilities for engaging the natural world.
Read the full interview here.
Alicia Nauta is an artist based in Toronto. She makes screenprinted posters, prints, wallpaper, books, zines, printed textiles and other multiples. Her focus is on analog ways of making, using xerox material culled from older publications to create collaged compositions. The collages reflect on the dualities and exchanges present in all forms of human and natural life: with light, there is darkness; with progress, there is decline. Environmental degradation, the crumbling of civilization, abstracted and psychedelic reality, and human belonging are key themes that are explored. Her work has been shown at the AGO, Artscape Youngplace, Art Metropole, Burnaby Public Library (BC), Printed Matter (US) and Koganecho Art Centre (JP). She is member of Punchclock, a Toronto print studio, and teaches screenprinting and other DIY workshops at the Art Gallery of Ontario as part of the AGO Youth Free After Three program.
Joële Walinga is a Toronto-based visual artist and filmmaker whose work explores subjective experience, outsidership, and the aesthetics of empowerment. Her work has been shown at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Khyber Centre for the Arts, Narwhal Contemporary, Xpace Cultural Centre, The Roundtable Residency and Wendy’s Subway, and has been featured in Canadian Art, CBC Arts, Art Matters, Daily VICE and POV Magazine among others. Her 2018 feature documentary “God Straightens Legs” had its world premiere at DOXA Documentary Film Festival in Vancouver in May, and she is currently in production on a documentary about The Dragon Academy in Toronto.
