Cat Hart
Vancouver, BC
ARTIST BIO
Originally from the UK, for the last 17 years I have been living on the unceded and stolen lands of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam Skxwú7mesh (Squamish) & səlilw̓ ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations, also known as Vancouver in Canada. My work explores memory, place, home, and loss through the specificity of the materials I use; their origins, histories, and locatedness. Influenced by Indigenous teachings about good land relations, alongside the deepening climate crisis, my interest in materiality and place has inspired a focus on more sustainable, accountable, and site-responsive approaches. I seek to develop an art practice that counters the ways that colonialism encourages an extractive, non-relational orientation to land.
Influenced by decolonial and queer ecologies, and ecofeminism, my work is situated within a shift in photography towards artist practices that have lower ecological impacts. I see this as an opportunity to slow down, explore the ways that the origins of materials and objects evoke meaning, and to celebrate the unexpected results of site-specific materials.
I hold a Masters in Communications from Simon Fraser University, and a diploma in Fine Arts from Langara College. For the past ten years I have worked in non-profit communications supporting social change work. I seek to embed my practice in my two homes: Canada and the UK.
PROJECT STATEMENT
This body of work uses film photography to make colonial histories visible through the invasive species that thrive in disturb environments, such as the former sites of industry and resource extraction that took off during the intensive settlement of BC during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Taking brickyards, coal mines, railway tracks and bridges as my subjects, I explore spaces that have been ‘returned to nature’ through becoming parks, conservation sites, and ‘greenways’ for bikes and pedestrians. However, the 'nature' that has reclaimed the land is not the same as the native ecologies that existed before they were colonized. I use invasives like dandelion, ‘white man’s footsteps’ or broadleaf plantain, and blackberry to develop and/or interrupt these images so that the plants leave their mark on this surfacing or re-imaging of history. Using double exposures allows me to overlay histories and ecologies: sites of industry, settlement, and colonization overlap with native and invasive plants.
By using site-specific plants, and invasives in particular, I engage critically with photography, whose development reflects its own particular relationship with colonization through documentation, categorization, and control of the ‘other.’ I seek ways to avoid the toxic nature of traditional darkroom processes by using plants as developers, embracing the imperfections and serendipity that come with materially-oriented process, and the challenge to a sense of ‘realness’ that comes through the resulting images which reflect a more complicated, messy history.
