That which grows wild & profusely, 2020

“Over the summer of 2020, the Centre For Art Tapes teamed up with ARt@LARGE and the Halifax Independent Filmmakers Festival to commission five artist to create original augmented reality projects in Halifax, exploring themes around seeing and exploring the unseen.” That Which Grows Wild & Profusely was one of these projects, being experienced from November to December 2020. A description of the project is below:

“Conversations around colonization often, rightfully so, centre on the communities who were colonized and the intergenerational impacts that ripple to this day. As you stroll in the Halifax public garden, it’s also important to consider not only that we are on unceded and unsurrended Mi’kmaq land, but also the very nature of this garden is steeped in the same colonial history. The Victorian period saw ‘advances’ in plant horticulture with the transportation and transplanting of ‘exotic’, ‘rare’ and ‘never seen before’ plants taken from far off landscapes by European explorers. The entire structure of Victorian gardens are based on hierarchies; from the ornate fences lining the garden, a signifier of wealth, to the plants included in the garden symbolizing the ‘conquered land’ of the “empire on which the sun never sets” . During this time European greed and obsession with the “other” destroyed species of orchids, ferns and other species found on land that was new to Europeans but very much inhabited by Indigenous peoples of those places. The Halifax Public Gardens is not exempt from these colonial attitudes and history.

that which grows wild and profusely is an intervention to these pervasive mindsets. This project gives time and space to plants within the margins, the ones that thrive despite Victorian landscaped lines. The ones that push through the forced order. My Nêhiýaw/Métis hands take back small spots within this Victorian landscape. The gesture of beading connects me to my ancestors; my ancestors who were pushed off of our land to make way for colonial settlement and leisure spaces like this one. Though this land is not my ancestors we are connected through shared history and shared continued oppression. Beading is an act of resistance, by recognizing the presence of the plants named “weeds” I acknowledge and respect their resistance; we are still here. Title asks the viewer to confront this history and the ongoing pervasive ways that these mentalities are enacted in our day-to-day, and the power of shifting in focus.

Remember you are in Mi’kma’ki - unceded and unsurrendered Mi’kmaq land. The Halifax Public Gardens is on stolen land.”