Obstruction

OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, March 1, 5-7 pm at Open Studio.

Jill Ho-You’s work engages with the anxiety, fear, and speculation about the future of the planet by imaging the world after the Anthropocene reaches the predicted climax of catastrophic climate change. Set in a future where biodiversity, the environment, human industry, society, and health have been irreversibly changed, Ho-You’s work memorializes a fleeting past while simultaneously speculating on a precarious future. Examining the interconnectedness of natural and human-made factors in the ecosystem, her work explores the potential for human-driven climate change to unravel the invisible web that keeps these factors in equilibrium.

Through a mixture of print and bio art/print-based installation, the work in this exhibition references familiar urban and industrial landscapes turned strange and uncanny. Oil wells and offshore rigs have become empty and impotent, unable to harvest resources which no longer exist. Complex ecosystems with their flora and fauna are bleached, desiccated, and sterilized. No longer maintained by the inhabitants that constructed them, cities, and infrastructure crumble from disuse. The human body is reduced to the cellular mathematics of the vectors and pathogens that infect us with viruses and disease. Catalogued and fixed under the microscopic gaze of an imagined future, things are slowly transformed and reclaimed by mould and bacteria, the agents of decay.

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Jill Ho-You is an Associate Professor in Print Media at the Alberta University of the Arts. Her practice explores the intersection of trauma, embodied memory, and the environment through a mixture of print media, bio art, installation, and drawing. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including solo exhibitions at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Martha Street Studio in Winnipeg, MB and The New Gallery in Calgary, AB. She has also participated in numerous group shows such as at the International Print Center New York, USA; Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, Japan; and the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Art, ROC.

Jill Ho-You gratefully acknowledges funding support from the Alberta University of the Arts.