After my previous series around the landscape of Peru – as a personal quest to understand the loss of my sister as well as, in more general sense, environmental loss – I now want to develop new work in the northwest of the American continent, in South-West British Columbia, Canada. I long for the towering, ancient cedar trees, the mist from the Pacific Ocean, the mountains and green-blue lakes that are the territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Lil’wat first nations.
This journey forms the basis for a new series of works that bridge inner-perception, landscape and indigenous knowledge. My aim is to contribute through my work to a different, more connected perspective on people and nature, beyond the western gaze. Not a linear quest from A to B, but a circle: a new entanglement of landscape, inner perception and cultural resonance and heritage. In the silence of my studio, back with my familiar material charcoal, I hope to make a series of new drawings that invite slowing down and stillness – and a different way of looking: one that recognizes that we are not outside nature, but are indissolubly part of it and connected to our ancestors as well as our future. This adds a depth, an extra layer, creating layers of silence, both literally as metaphorically. A restless balance in time, between past and future and lightness and darkness, at a both individual as more general level.
I visited the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre in Whistler, the Museum of Vancouver (exhibition That which Sustains Us) and the Museum of Anthropology Vancouver, to delve into the relationship between indigenous culture and landscape. This project represents a crucial step in that process. Yet it remains rooted in an artisanal and slow process – slow-art in all its simplicity: using only charcoal, eraser and paper as materials. Creating layered images that represent the fleetingness of existence.