For more than 20 years, Toronto photo-based artist Sara Angelucci has transformed found photographs and created images exposing the cultural and historical conditions outside the image frame. Her work brings attention to the social forces that generate the language of photography. Her series Aviary -- which morphs extinct and endangered birds with 19th-century cartes-de-visite portraits -- reveals the colonizing role the camera played in capturing animals for consumption. In her current work, Nocturnal Botanical Ontario, images of entwined native and invasive plants -- made with a digital scanner -- pay homage to photography as a tool of scientific inquiry. These complex botanical compositions uncover the impacts of settler colonialism and global trade on our ecology. Through acts of empathy, embodiment, and envisioning, the images and essays in Undergrowth seek to reconcile our fraught relationship with the natural world, addressing one of the most critical issues of our time.
Undergrowth is a co-publication with Art Gallery Sudbury Galerie d'art de Sudbury.
About the Author: Sara Angelucci is a Toronto-based artist working in photography, video, and audio. An adjunct professor in photography at the School of Image Arts, Toronto Metropolitan University, Angelucci is represented by Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto. Sara-Angelucci.ca
Shannon Anderson is an independent curator and writer of contemporary art. She has curated exhibitions for galleries across Canada. She has written essays for publications produced by numerous art galleries and has contributed texts to Art Papers, Azure, Border Crossings, Canadian Art, C Magazine, Carousel, Designlines, EyeMazing Amsterdam, and the Globe and Mail. ShannonJAnderson.com
Art Gallery of Sudbury Galerie d'art de Sudbury is a dynamic bilingual public visual art gallery and key art educational, cultural, and tourism destination in Northeastern Ontario. The gallery creates meaningful engagement opportunities in dialogue with contemporary artists and its permanent collection for all visitors. artgalleryofsudbury.myshopify.com
