In her practice as an artist and researcher, Jen Rae navigates the troubled waters of community action, research-
creation, and environmental activism at a time when the planet is mired in a humanitarian crisis of historic proportions. Of M\u00e9tis origin, she is the cofounder of the Centre for Reworlding, an activist think tank that, through their Creative Resilience Lab, brings together artists, scientists, and intellectuals around climate-related disaster risk reduction and resilience. In this role, Rae strives to promote the use of decolonializing and multidisciplinary methodologies and epistemologies in order to respond adequately to environmental disasters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sensitive to the capacity of some communities to come together in the face of adversity and to the catalytic power of art as a generally safe space where such alliances may be developed, Rae interrogates the artist\u2019s role as a connective agent in ecological activism. She advocates speculative fiction and creative work for collectively imagining simultaneously resilient and engaging ways of surviving the end of the world\u200a\u2014\u200aof a world\u200a\u2014\u200aand, in her projects, debunks anthropocentric notions of progress, evolution, and growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The series of drawings Everything Exists in Darkness Quadrilogy <\/em>(2015\u2013\u200a\u200a22) presents a dystopian future in which what remains of humanity, consumed by its extractivist ideals, is withering away. Meticulously rendered in pencil, Rae\u2019s drawings propose apocalyptic landscapes that recall the nightmarish visions in the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. For the Ready, Steady, Go<\/em> project (2020), produced in collaboration with photographer Emma Byrnes, Rae drew inspiration from survival kits to create assemblages of objects meant to confront extreme conditions that she and family members had imagined. The kits varied widely from one person to another, with children favouring teddy bears and playing cards rather than compasses and other traditional survival tools. The work invites us to come together, with family, friends, and colleagues, to imagine plausible (and not-so-plausible) emergency situations and the tools required to meet our vital needs in such cases. Against an apocalyptic backdrop, Rae urges us toward a reflection at once playful and pragmatic on issues yet highly deleterious, and encourages us to adopt a resilient and committed posture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Translated from the French by Ron Ross<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Holding a master\u2019s degree in art history with a concentration in feminist studies, Anne-Marie Dubois uses the critical potential of feminist and queer theories to debunk different discourses\u2019 ontological claim to truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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