Art Metropole

#12551

HERE (I AM A MIGRATING SEED)

Erin Whittier

Date

2015

Publisher

Erin Whittier

Format

Artists' Books

Size

6 × 5 in

Length

16 pages

Genre

Photography, Installation Art

Description

16 photographs, bound by bull-clip. Originally intended as installation, to be displayed in a line around a room.

In this installation the viewer holds a conversation with a lone cabbage tree within the New Zealand landscape. The dialogue is on displacement and loneliness. In the hectic 21st century life, we move about, we travel and live many lives. Yet when one enters the environment, and engulfs themselves in the natural world, something psychological is triggered. Even in a life of transience, one can find grounding in the trees – they stay. They are a constant. The trees and brush and fresh clean air, they are a place one can know over time and meet over and over and over again, even if the country or vegetation or vista changes. They breathe, they detoxify, they do exactly what they need to do, what we need to do but don’t. In these earthly places we finally find my sense of place. Displacement and isolation is a global psychological struggle, whether it is felt in a new place, or at home. But through nature we can learn to breathe and strengthen ourselves by growing tougher roots.

The installation is a exchange between the viewer’s inner feelings and the landscape. They are small, they are personal – one must come very close, and intimately converse. But this close, no-one else can witness your interactions. The discourse is long, and you have to travel along the room, staying in conversation. The longer you take with the piece the better you get to know it, the same as with acquainting a new person, or new place.

Edition of 50.

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