Statement

My work examines the lives of other animals—who they are and the complex and significant ways we are bound and entangled together.

In his seminal philosophical work, What Is It Like to Be a Bat? Thomas Nagel posits that an organism is conscious if there “is something that it is like to be that organism.” In other words, consciousness involves a subjective point of view—a felt experience of the world. This idea resonates with the biologist Jakob von Uexküll’s concept of an umwelt, that organisms inhabit a unique perceptual world shaped by their sensory capacities and biological needs that inform their conscious understanding. Informed by these positions, along with others, and my own embodied encounters with other animals, I see the human species as one among many sentient, conscious animal species who share the world with us and possess their own deeply rich, felt sense of their world and worldly relations. And, I think we can approximate an understanding of their lives through careful observation, ethical attention, informed imagination, and empathy. It is from this starting point that I begin looking and thinking about other animals in my work.

Central to my artistic practice is sustained observation and embodied encounters with the other animal subjects who inform my work. Research exploring the theoretical, scientific, social, and political ways we claim to know another animal occurs alongside material experimentation and reflection. Together, the processes of thinking through and with materials, embodied encounters with other animals, and theoretical inquiry, guide a conceptual frame for the creation of a work. At times, this process unfolds in reverse: concepts take shape that initiate questions and research, guiding me to embodied encounters with another animal, with the culmination of an idea finding its form in material best determined to hold it, from drawing, painting, soft sculpture, installation, or land-based works. A key aspect of my work is understanding how our human ways of being impact the worldly lives of other animals, how we are implicated in their loss, and how their lives and our own are critically connected. I see biodiversity loss, both at the species and individual levels, is aesthetic, ethical, and material.

At a time of accelerating biodiversity loss and ecological transformation, I seek to honour and respond to the lives of other animals. It is their lives and our relationship with them that I want people to see and to remember.

ME: Why am I alive?

OLD WOMAN: Because everything else is.

ME: No. I mean the purpose.

OLD WOMAN: That is the purpose. To learn about your relatives.

ME: My family?

OLD WOMAN: Yes. The moon, stars, rocks, trees, plants, water, insects, birds, mammals. Your whole family. Learn about that relationship. How you’re moving through time and space together. That’s why your alive.

Richard Wagamese - Embers: One Ojibway’s Meditations