Artist’s Statement:
The tension between nature and urban habitat is a decisive theme in my work. It reveals our influence on land use, ecosystems, biodiversity and species extinction. It behooves us to re-think our relationship with nature. This split between nature and culture reflects the historically paternalistic and patriarchal values; the belief that “man dominates nature.” Taking a nurturing and holistic approach to the process of nature is rare, whereas the oppression, disruption, and domination of nature are omnipresent.
My images explore the human impact that The Built Environment has wrought upon the urban landscape. I combine fragile Botanica with Cement, Concrete, and Endangered Species, to reveal our urban amnesia and the marginalization of nature.
I have re-contextualized the urban billboard and view it as a transitory and accidental installation, never intended as a work of art nor as a vehicle to discuss the Sixth Mass Extinction. Here, they are re-purposed as a trajectory for the language of nature, examining our climate crisis. Creating fabricated billboards, I capture a different audience, a mobile one, sealed in cars, within The Built Environment, nature being re-imagined.
The inevitable global impact of pandemics and their mutations, is reshaping how we think. Our complex relationship with nature is exposed as consumptive, intrusive, and fragmented. Clearly, now, it must be re-thought. We must hit the pause button and re-set our visions going forward and create a new respect for nature.
Linda-Marlena grew up in a (once) small town in the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia, west of the Canadian Rockies. She was surrounded by nature for which she gained a deep respect and curiosity at a young age. Being exposed to cacti, rattlesnakes, mantids and the occasional cougar or bear was not uncommon. At that time, light pollution was not in one’s vocabulary. The Pleiades sparkled like diamonds in the clear night skies.
Now, having lived in the highly urban environments of New York, Toronto, and Montreal, she is acutely aware of the struggle to transition from our industrial age cities into new, greener, environmentally sustainable spaces. Her artistic practice focuses on this transition. It is deeply rooted in her awareness of landscape disruption, resource extraction, and ecological loss.
As a visual artist, she captures these transitions using floral portraits as a universal metaphor. Adding different cameras to her artist’s toolkit, she photographs the beauty of a fragile structure often overlooked. She pushes a visual narrative with a hidden aesthetic, an ephemeral, temporal state, revealed before the image and its traces disappear. She provides the viewer with a different level of awareness, capturing an unintentional beauty, still vibrant and compelling, before it expires. This unvarnished truth is a reminder of the earthly nature of life.
Life metamorphosis also applies to her exploration of The Built Environment where her photography focuses on the transitional stages of monumental architectural construction sites in cities. The transformation of the urban landscape is relentless. From deep excavation to a finished, accomplished, architectural structure, she looks at these spaces through a different lens, recognizing that each site has own agenda of change.
Her life journey continues to expose the casual viewer to an intrinsic, quotidian beauty found everywhere, to provoke a greater awareness of our environment.
Linda-Marlena lives and works in Montreal, Quebec. She has exhibited in France, New York, Brooklyn, Sante Fe, Toronto, and Montreal and is a recipient of the research and creation award, given by the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec, CALQ. Her work has been published in photo journals; she also has works in The Art and Heritage Collection oc McGill University Health Centre, Montreal, and in private collections in Canada, USA, UK and Switzerland.