Primary Futures

In recent projects, my practice explores the shifting ecologies of forests in the context of climate change, tracing the material and sensory imprints left by environmental stress and cumulative impacts. In a series titled Primary Futures (2025), I focus on Canada’s primary and old-growth forests, particularly the Western Red Cedar—a keystone species, vital carbon store and culturally significant tree. Through processes of burning, dyeing, layering, and printing, I reflect on how elemental forces like fire, sun, and water, once stabilizing, are now reshaping these landscapes under industrial impacts of deforestation and fire suppression.

I work with charred wood, dyes, and layered textiles to evoke the deep entanglements between land, species, and elemental forces. My process draws from fieldwork, ecological research, and collaboration with forestry scientists, but is equally rooted in the tactile methods of the studio—where I mark, burn and build up surfaces to mirror the cycles of disturbance and regeneration that forests undergo.

Through this work, I trace how landscapes hold memory: bearing the disturbances of wildfires and the scars of industrial extraction, and shifting climatic patterns, while also offering sites of resilience and renewal. By layering organic and synthetic materials, I aim to register both damage and adaptation. Across my practice, I see forest systems not as static backdrops but as living archives of disturbance, resilience, and ongoing negotiation between human and non-human forces. Additionally the primary colours of blue, red and yellow serve as a reference to early education in both colour and meaning. These colours refer to “origins” and allow for a conversation that extends beyond the gallery and into a way to talk about primary forests, and how they serve as fundamental life support systems.