Symbiotic / Symbiotique

SPAO Gallery: May 18 - September 15, 2024
CAFM: May 10 - October 31, 2024

SPAO and the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum are pleased to present Symbiotic, an exhibition presented at the SPAO Centre Gallery and the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum (CAFM).

Symbiotic features work from photo-based artists across Canada who engage with technology, both old and new, in their artistic practices. The exhibition is spread across two sites: SPAO and CAFM. The artists on view at SPAO use emerging technologies in conjunction with photographic techniques to reinterpret the world around them. At CAFM, the outdoor display features work by artists who work with plants and insects as agents in the production of contemporary art. 

From an artist working with a synchrotron beam to replicate the anatomy of a zebrafish, to an artist who reanimates bees in a cyberhive, the works in this exhibition engage contemporary subjects such as ecology, the climate crisis, and threats of extinction through interspecies collaboration and digital futurisms.

All together, this exhibition explores the potential for art and science to come together to showcase the interdependency of all living things.


Le SPAO : Photographic Arts Centre et le Musée de l'agriculture et de l'alimentation du Canada sont ravis de proposer Symbiotique, une exposition présentée à la SPAO Centre Gallery et au Musée de l'agriculture et de l'alimentation du Canada (MAAC).

Symbiotique présente des œuvres d'artistes photographes de partout au Canada qui intègrent la technologie, ancienne et nouvelle, à leurs pratiques artistiques. L'exposition est répartie sur deux sites : le SPAO et le MAAC. Les artistes dont les œuvres sont exposées au SPAO allient technologies émergentes et techniques photographiques pour réinterpréter el monde qui les entoure. Au MAAC, l'installation extérieure présente des œuvres d'artistes qui intègrent les plantes et les insectes comme coproducteurs d'art contemporain.

De l'artiste travaillant avec un faisceau de synchrotrons pour reproduire l'anatomie du poisson-zèbre à celui qui réanime des abeilles dans une cyberruche, les auteurs des œuvres de cette exposition abordent des thèmes contemporains comme l'écologie, la crise climatique et les menaces d'extinction par l'entremise d'une collaboration interespèces et de futurismes numériques.

Sur les deux sites, cette exposition explore le potentiel de collaboration des arts et des sciences en vue de mettre en évidence l'interdépendance de tous les organismes vivants.

 

INSTALLATION VIEWS


THE ARTISTS

Jennifer Willet


Dr. Jennifer Willet
is an artist, a Canada Research Chair in Art, Science, and Ecology, a Professor in the School of Creative Arts at the University of Windsor and the Director of INCUBATOR Art Lab, founded in 2009.  She is a member of the College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists in the Royal Society of Canada.  Willet is a leader in the Canadian bioart community and works internationally as an artist and curator in the field.  In 2018, Willet opened a new state-of-the-art bioart laboratory, and in 2020 a storefront bioart studio and community engagement centre in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. 

Baroque Biology: Paper Theatre presents a feminist science-fiction where biotechnology manifests interspecies collaboration, reproduction, theatre and storytelling as a means to re-imagine our shared biotech future. The artist reimagines laboratory aesthetics as feminine, gawdy, and fantastical in direct contradiction to the norms of contemporary laboratory design. Like fairy tales for a biotech future, each allegory focuses on a mammal, microbe, plant, or insect, that attempts to communicate with humans in a helpful manner about the biological processes they employ for survival, reproduction, or aesthetic pleasure.

Image detail by Justin Elliott


Marie Jeanne Musiol


Marie-Jeanne Musiol
creates images and experimental videos with the luminous imprints of plants that she records in electromagnetic fields. These bodies of light are expressed in hundreds of images assembled as an “energy herbarium”operating at the crossroads of botany and  electrophotography. She also extracts mirror images of the cosmos enfolded in radiant coronas suggestive of a holographic universe. Her "energy botany" is an invitation to see the universe differently - a place where open-ended sensibilities can accommodate both hard science and metaphysical approaches within a worldview. Her photographs, light boxes, installations and videos have been exhibited in galleries and museums in Canada and abroad. 

Over the course of an unusual journey, I record traces of the hundreds of leaves and radiating objects that manifest as Bodies of Light. These delicate interfaces operate at the intersection of two reactive phenomena - photography and electromagnetism. Their luminous imprints fixed on silver film allow us to see precisely how our transactional exchanges with matter and nature are organized in the world of energy.


Radha Chaddah


Radha Chaddah
is a Toronto-based visual artist and scientist. Radha makes art about invisible realities using light as her primary medium.  Her work examines the interconnectedness of our material reality from the micro to the macro. Radha uses the tools of research science to grow cells using embedded fluorescent light-emitting molecules. She examines these cells and myriad other fragments of nature using a variety of imaging systems from light-based laser confocal fluorescent microscopes to non-light-based, ultra-high magnification scanning electron systems. Radha is the founder of Under 5 Studio, which brings together traditional and new media artists to produce work for public exhibition.


Beneath Us is a photographic and sonic installation, produced by the collaboration of Radha Chaddah and Dan Bédard. The subject matter is the hidden realms that exist at a scale invisible to us. Chaddah removed tiny specks of wax from the bottom of a beehive, coated them in gold and photographed them using a scanning electron microscope that can see 180,000 times life size. This work symbolizes the invisibility of non-human narratives, the essential interrelatedness and interdependency of living things, and the beauty and fragility of these relationships.


Chris Myhr


Chris Myhr
is an interdisciplinary artist working with sound, the moving image, photography, electronics, and media installation. His work explores intersections between art, ecology, and science - with an emphasis on embodied experience, materiality, and practices of “deep listening” (and looking). Myhr completed undergraduate studies at Simon Fraser University, and the University of Lethbridge, before finishing graduate work at NSCAD University. He is based in Hamilton, Ontario, and is a professor in the Department of Communication Studies & Media Arts at McMaster University.

Blue-green algae is a toxic photosynthetic bacteria, currently blanketing large sections of the Great Lakes as the result of warming seasonal temperatures, agricultural trends, and wastewater overflow.

Suspensions simultaneously reference the formal properties of microscopic and telescopic imaging, and gesture toward the idea that thinking through complex ecological (and existential) issues such as the current climate crisis will necessitate perspectives that transcend simplistic delineations such as micro/macro, here/there, local/global.  

Drops of contaminated water are evaporated on scientific glass and lens elements harvested from data projectors. Layers of glass are stacked, arranged, and film-scanned to create large-scale digital images.


Jean-Sébastien (JS) Gauthier


Jean-Sébastien (JS) Gauthier
is a sculptor and media artist who adopts diverse forms of inquiry and experimentation to create immersive artworks. To this end, he deploys an interdisciplinary mix of approaches ranging from traditional sculpture practice, interactive video production, performance art, 3D rendering, and most recently cutting-edge scientific imaging technologies. 

The works that make up Dans la Mesure (Within Measure) explore the physical similarities between human beings and animals through close collaboration with scientists working in cellular and evolutionary biology. By exploring a parity between the species, this project sets out to challenge the idea of the world’s lost enchantment through new scientific discoveries that disrupt traditional knowledge and call for a redefinition of the sublime. 


Casey Koyczan


Casey Koyczan
is a Dene interdisciplinary artist using various mediums to communicate how culture and technology can grow together in order for us to develop a better understanding of who we are, where we come from, and what we will be. He creates with whatever tools necessary to bring an idea to fruition, and specializes in sculpture, installation, 3D/VR/AR/360, video, and audio works. 

This body of work was created by re-imagining materials from Indigenous culture as an embodiment of human characteristics within a 3D environment to translate as surreal beings, creatures, and to bring out their spirit.

Drawing inspiration from such mediums and materials as moose/caribou hair tufting, beadwork, hide-tanning and quillwork, these works showcase surreal transformations of how they are interpreted and appreciated. As an artist who has loved these materials since childhood but has not avidly used them in a physical sense, my approach has allowed me to work with them in a completely different way with digital influence and being able to implement physics properties.


Alexander McLeod


While a photo-based artist, Toronto-based Alexander McLeod has collaborated with fashion and music artists in new media, like Gord Downie, Nelly Furtado, Nike and Condé Nast. In his artistic practice, McLeod constructs hyperrealistic 3-D environments using CGI technologies. He is interested in the interconnection of everything. He creates forms to act as archetypes to illustrate this idea. Palpitating with energy, these digital forms stretch and pull amongst themselves, only to abruptly recoil back into a singular shape. 

McLeod stages otherworldly scenes that oscillate between hybrid spaces of the real and virtual; the organic and the manufactured.


Geoffrey Pugen


Geoffrey Pugen
is an artist experimenting at the intersection of technology and nature through video, photo and installation. Thematically, Pugen contemplates speculative futures, transhumanism, the impact of nature on society and conflicts between the virtual and the real. His most recent sculptural work integrates video screen technology into architectural forms, creating spatially-synced multi-screen installations. 

In Weather Stations humans cease to exist and nature is left to flourish, forming an unexpected partnership with autonomous technology. Human presence is remembered by screens and manifests in the figurative weather towers, which continue to monitor the now hyper-flourishing ecological world, predicting the posthuman future for their own survival.


Keely Hopkins


Keely Hopkins is a visual artist based in Kjipuktuk (Halifax). Born in Sik Ooh Kotoki (Lethbridge), Alberta on Treaty 7 Territory, Hopkins completed a Bachelor of Science in Biology in 2019 at the University of Lethbridge before pursuing visual art at NSCAD University. They graduated with a BFA in Photography and a minor in Art History in 2023.

Hopkins’ practice is built on a photographic foundation that incorporates sculpture and video. Highly experimental, they focus on material and a process-based approach to make work. Hopkins is interested in speaking directly to the historical link between science and photography to explore objectivity, interconnectivity, time, and awe.


CURATORS

 

Katie Lydiatt

Katie Lydiatt is an arts administrator, writer, curator and researcher living and working on the unceded territory of the Algonquin, Anishinabek people (Ottawa.) She holds an MA in Art History from Carleton University, and a Curatorial Studies diploma from the Institute of Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture. She is currently the Gallery Programming Manager and Residency Coordinator at SPAO.

She has held positions at SAW Gallery, The Carleton University Art Gallery, The National Gallery of Canada, and served as Editor for the RENDER Graduate Journal of Arts and Culture in 2019.

 
 

SPONSORS + PARTNERS