Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

Erin Siddall, Siddall, Erin : Igharas, Ts?m?

Great Bear Money Rock

Installation multimédia | 16mm | couleur | 10:6 | Canada | 2021

Installation Synopsis: Great Bear Money Rock traces how the land and the life of local Indigenous communities overlap. The Lake Is a Cup (16mm film, 2021) considers the material memories retained by the lake: What stories may be told by these waters if we become attuned to this more-than-human body? Made collaboratively, views of the ghost mine, Dél?n?, and the lake, are splintered by projection through a water bottle balanced on a long, narrow prism. Like water, but also like bodies, the film accumulates radioactivity. The installation is permeated by the mechanical sounds made by the projector in an almost-organic cadence that constantly brings us back to our own bodies. Retracing the narratives conserved in the waters of the lake and in the rocks strewn around the landscape, Great Bear Money Rock exposes the imperceptible—that which evades our senses but whose effects are nonetheless profoundly physical. Other installation elements of Great Bear Money Rock include a garden of crystals from the site of the mine, enclosed in glass bubbles to contain the weak radioactivity they emit. Even though the glass is fragile, it plays a doubly protective role: it keeps us from contact with the ore, and it preserves the territory in its translucent showcase—territory threatened by human activity. Large-format prints placed on structures show the heaps of stones that cover the abandoned mine. Assembled field recordings, in sync with the projection, inundate these rubbly landscapes.

Erin Siddall (lives in Vancouver, Canada) is a visual artist whose work encourages the viewer into thinking about the embodied experience of looking, beyond the subject at which they are looking. Erin’s practice also considers the photographic representation of the unrepresentable through invisible environmental hazards, hidden histories and traumatic events. She holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia and a BMA from Emily Carr University, both Vancouver, and has shown at venues including the Toronto Biennial of Art; Momenta Biennale, Montreal, the Vancouver Art Gallery; Gallery 44, Toronto; the Burrard Art Foundation Studio, Vancouver; and Nuit Blanche Saskatoon. Ts??m? Igharas (Tahltan First Nation, born in Smithers, Canada) is an interdisciplinary artist. She uses a potlatch methodology to create conceptual artworks and teachings influenced by her mentorship in Northwest Coast formline design at K’saan, her studies in visual culture and her time in the mountains. Ts??m? attended Emily Carr University of Art and Design (ECUAD), Vancouver, and received an MFA from OCAD U, Toronto. She won the 2018 Emily Award for outstanding ECUAD alumni and is one of the twenty-five 2020 Sobey Award winners. She has shown and performed in various places in Canada and internationally in Sweden, Mexico, USA and Chile.