Artist Statement

To create Lake Ontario Portrait (2017 – present) I collaborated with Lake Ontario, mud, and microbes to explore bodily borders, responsible collaboration, as well as our connection and responsibilities to a broader ecology The work is comprised of fifteen prisms filled with mud from fifteen locations around the Canadian and American shores of Lake Ontario. When exposed to light, the microorganisms begin to flourish, becoming visible in the form of vibrant marbling. The work is alive and constantly changing as the microbes live and die revealing the vast array of life in soil and how we are connected by it.

• Nicole Clouston is a practice-based researcher who completed her Ph.D. in Visual Art at York University (Toronto, Canada). In her practice she asks: What happens when we acknowledge, through an embodied experience, our connection to a world teeming with life both around and inside us? nicoleclouston.com