Fire looms large in Art Hunter\u2019s powerful documentation of Anishinaabeg stewardship of the Kay-Nah-Chi-Wah-Nung mounds on the banks of the Rainy River. Hunter\u2019s dramatic photographs and illuminating video interviews exemplify the exhibition\u2019s repositioning of earthwork as a form of direct action sustaining ancestral ecologies. Honouring plant life as an active site of memorialization, artist collective BUSH Gallery\u2019s adjacent assemblage of tipi fragments, Plants as[are] Monuments <\/em>(2021), unfurls a sympathetic ethos. Its titular paraphrase of the Tuscarora artist and scholar Jolene Rickard was articulated by exposing fireweed to the sun. One of the first plants to emerge from the devastation wrought by forest fire, fireweed carries multivalent meanings: A symbol of the cataclysmic effects of combustion in the Anthropocene, it also signifies the regenerative role of flame in controlled burns that encourage the growth of medicines\u2014an immemorial practice of inter-species care whose longevity troubles logics of linear periodization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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$\"BUSH$
BUSH Gallery<\/strong>
Plants as (are) Monuments,<\/em> 2021, installation view,
Art Museum at the University of Toronto, 2025.
Photo: LF Documentation, courtesy of the artists and the
Art Museum at the University of Toronto<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Bridging the exhibition\u2019s principal staging areas, Michael Belmore\u2019s Turbulent Air\/Turbulent Water <\/em>(2025) reimagines a familiar rural technology of spatial partition as a diplomatic medium for negotiating with the fickle agency of wind. Its stained wooden slats are deftly sanded into patterns reminiscent of wampum belts that viewers are invited to decipher as binary code. An outdoor variation on this mobilization of the snow fence, drift<\/em>, will be installed on King\u2019s College Circle this winter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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$\"\"$
Michael Belmore<\/strong>
Turbulent Air \/ Turbulent Water<\/em>, installation view,
Art Museum at the University of Toronto, 2025.
Photo: LF Documentation, courtesy of the artist and the
Art Museum at the University of Toronto<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
This punning nod to Richard Serra\u2019s minimalist Shift <\/em>(1970\u201372), the iconic zigzagging sculpture in a farmer\u2019s field north of Toronto, reverberates in Lisa Myers\u2019s in-progress Plant Signals <\/em>(2025). Upending Serra\u2019s monumentalizing record of a pas de deux with fellow artist Joan Jonas, Myers began by conducting a plant survey of the lands adjacent to Shift, <\/em>which became the springboard for an elaborate speculative fiction. Like Belmore and Myers, Faye HeavyShield is an artist who actively engages the legacies of minimalist land art. HeavyShield\u2019s poignant video Clan <\/em>(2020) documents ephemeral markers of familial presence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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$\"Lisa$
Lisa Myers<\/strong>
Plant Signals<\/em>, installation view,
Art Museum at the University of Toronto, 2025.
Photo: LF Documentation, courtesy of the artist and the
Art Museum at the University of Toronto<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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$\"Edward$
Edward Poitras<\/strong>
Mistaseni<\/em>, 2001\u201302, installation view,
Art Museum at the University of Toronto, 2025.
Photo: LF Documentation, courtesy of the artist and the
Art Museum at the University of Toronto<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Edward Poitras\u2019s deft evocation of the more-than-human in Mistaseni <\/em>(2001\u201302) materializes allied tensions between agency and absence that Migwans places in productive conversation with Alex Jacobs-Blum\u2019s photographs of historic Haudenosaunee sites that the artist reclaims through acts of presencing. Swapping a hardy patch of prairie sod from the George Gordon First Nation with a strip of manicured lawn from the former Mendel Art Gallery, Poitras\u2019s signature Offensive\/Defensive<\/em> (1988) evokes the caches of bullets hidden by Plains land defenders during the Riel Rebellion as well as the austere geometries of colour field painting. A strip of land of a very different order of magnitude\u2014the Haldimand Tract promised to the Haudenosaunee on both sides of the Grand River in 1784\u2014frames the intricate floral motifs of Protect the Tract\u2019s spellbinding Bead the Tract <\/em>(2023). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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$\"Protect$
Protect the Tract<\/strong>
(and beadworkers Talena Atfield, Jija Jacobs, Tesha Emarthle, and, Kahionwinehshon Phillips)
Bead the Tract<\/em>, 2023, installation view, Art Museum at the University of Toronto, 2025.
Photo: LF Documentation, courtesy of the artists and the
Art Museum at the University of Toronto<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Migwans situates its raised Tuscarora-style beadwork in generative dialogue with the protest actions of land defenders at 1492 Land Back Lane in Caledonia, a canny juxtaposition that warrants the exhibition\u2019s repositioning of earthwork as a cultural practice of sociality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Art Museum at the University of Toronto<\/strong>
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