the horizon as a dark line
OSGF
January 13 – February 17, 2020
Mary Ed Mecoy Hall Gallery, Murray State University Galleries at Murray University, Kentucky.
These images share a recent solo exhibition, the horizon as a dark line, at Murray University in Kentucky. The project began with a local “native” orchid collection created by Philip Branwhite, a self-described “recluse” and amateur botanist who lived in my family’s farming community in Tallangatta Valley, Australia. This installation draws from a multi-year research project where I identify, map and share the threats and vulnerabilities of ecological collapse—the impact of drought on our cattle, the ripple effects of settler colonialism on the endangered Crimson Spider Orchid (Caladenia concolor) and the experience of increasing regularity and intensity of fire on my families farming community.
Q&A With Calista Lyon
Where have you been the past few months?
I have spent my time at Milo Arts an artist live-work community in Columbus, Ohio. We make our home in an old Potteresque schoolhouse, built in 1894. We have been hunkering down with a couple of friends in our hallway—who just happen to be fabulous cooks—sharing many lovely meals together.
At Milo Arts we share a large community garden. Our resident gardening queen, Sami Harthoorn and I have been weeding, turning the soil, laying cardboard, and planting our colder seeds of kale, shallots, peas, and radishes, readying for the last frost in mid-May.
Historically, what ideas, issues, and subject matter(s) have inspired your work?
I grew up on a cattle farm in Australia and from a young age I had an understanding of the impact of contemporary human life on the non-human, but I didn’t have the language for these relationships. I was recently reading Ghostly Matters by Avery Gordon and she articulated this more broadly, by stating, “…I have wondered sometimes whether…we have truly taken seriously that the intricate web of connections that characterizes any event or problem is the story.” It is these webs of intra and inter dependencies around ecological collapse that drive my work. I create representations of these relations, making visible what often goes unseen. This is the work of a lifetime, or many lifetimes, sadly, we don’t have time, we’re in an emergency.
Philosopher and ecofeminist Val Plumwood helped me to articulate a question that sums up this emergency, and I believe is the question of our time, How do we counter the “failure of dominant national and international political institutions to meet the situation of ecological crisis”?
What creative projects are you currently working on?
I have primarily been undertaking research for an upcoming re-write of a performance text. The Unknown and the Unnamed draws from the oral histories of amateur botanists and farmers, botanical and photographic archives, and literary and scientific research. These divergent forms of knowledge—local, Indigenous, academic, scientific—are woven together to identify, map and share how our bodies—orchid, cow, fungi, human, wasp—are made and un-made by one-another.
I’m also tinkering with a project that will have a life in the streets. My work relies heavily on research and through these interactions with thinkers on the page, I come across many prescient fragments that speak to larger philosophies and ideas. I am working with these fragments to challenge hierarchies of human dominance in relation to the non-human.
How has your artistic practice changed during this time?
I wouldn’t say my practice has shifted greatly; I am appreciative of a new experience of time. This relationship to time has allowed for connections to be made that in my daily context is difficult to maintain so consistently. The offering of uninterrupted time, and importantly, unscheduled time, is deeply important in our lives and I am constantly trying to build this possibility into my life and work.
Has COVID-19 shifted how you think about the natural world?
I have been trying to find positives in this moment. I have been thinking about the non-human experience of COVID-19, reduced air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, and increased solar productivity among other factors. I thought that I could find positives here, but I realized that this thinking is very fleeting and probably quite dangerous. I worry about the ways COVID-19’s political and economic ripples will derail planning and policy change in addressing climate collapse, I worry that this will be yet another excuse to dismiss the urgent changes we must take.