Faculty of Art

Sculpture/Installation

Harmony McNish

Connecting to Severance(d) Land

What is (y)our relationship to the land?

“The idea of this work is to actively connect to the land, specifically the severed land of the McNish Homestead. The land that makes up Lot 32, Con 1 on the boundary line of Fenelon Falls Township and Bexley was severand into a 100 acre homestead that the McNish family settled on after their immigration from Scotland. This land is the place that the artist goes to (re)connect her senses to home. When connected she feels a sense of belonging and a strong connection to her settler heritage. The work is a representation of an elevation map designed off of the Official Ontario Topographic map system and the exaggeration of elevation through my own memory and interpretations of the land. There are sharp cut outs of the representation of the land to show that the land has since been further severed into colonial home ownership, which has been cut away from the homestead. The idea is that the land and all is holistically connected through senses, relationships, and codependent networks but in Western ideologies there has been a disconnect emplaced by seemingly imaginary, but explicit boundary divisions and borders. Within the uncharted research the artist took many walks on the land of the homestead gathering knowledge, collecting, asking for permission to forage berries, and listening to what the land. The artist encourages fellow viewers to (re) connect to the senses of home, to the land, and acknowledge our presence on the interconnection of our lands and waters. ”