Artist Statement

Tags: Animation, Camera-Less Photography, Interactive Installation, Soil

Lately, I have been focusing on having nature control what humans create. In this installation, the pH data of the soil around the location of the artwork modulates an animation created with the leaves, plants and flowers planted in that same soil at an earlier stage of their life. The evolutive state of nature controls the life of the artwork created by a human and nature controls its own representation. My practice is interested in process, nontraditional tools and materials and the use of camera-less photography to reveal aspects of the natural. Through cycles of transformation between the virtual and the physical, I create “new seeds” that I plant in different materials to discover what emerges. The starting point is often natural specimens from a specific location scanogramed. Recently, I have encompassed interests for spiritual utopias and experimental projects. The concept of “flatness” interests me for its capacity to reboot societies under no, or different, hierarchies, including non-human people.

• Katherine Melançon holds a Masters in Fine Arts from Central Saint Martins University of the Arts (UK) and her BA in Communications studies/Interactive Medias from UQAM (CA). Her work has been exhibited in Canada, the US and various countries in Europe, including in France at Galerie Charlot, in the UK at gallery Arcadia Missa and in Switzerland at the Fotomuseum in Winterthur. Her works are part of private and public collections in Europe and North America such as PADORAC and the Central Saint Martins Museum Collection. Katherine works and lives in Montreal, Canada. katherinemelancon.com