“it looked like your BioSuit” is a speculative worldbuilding project that melds agronomy, figurative sculpture, climate science, mycology, and ecology in a jumbled heap that speaks to an imagined future.

This body of figurative ceramic sculptures tells the story of the Wearers, a fictional community who, following an ecological catastrophe of near-mythological origins, survived their new treacherous landscape through two pivotal adaptations. Through the consumption of plentiful terrestrial macro-algae they developed the ability to photosynthesize, an ability that has given them bright green complexions. The second adaptation is the creation of the BioSuits: living protective garments made of a symbiosis of fungi, moss, lichen, and algae. The BioSuits act as mycoremediating partners cleansing the environment around the Wearer to ensure their safety. In return for this gift the Wearers offer the BioSuits a stronger chance at reproduction. The Wearers are forever displaced, bound to walking generational migrations to avoid cyclical environmental hazards that wrack the earth’s surface. As they walk, the BioSuits accompany them, dispersing their spores over great distances. Over time, over generations of these cycles, the descendants of the BioSuits will eventually mycoremediate the entire planet.

Much of the worldbuilding focuses on the Wearers’ approach to agriculture. Their worldview is based in their development of sustainable agroecosystems, a worldview that mimics my own experiences growing up on a grain farm in rural Manitoba. The figures represented in my work are portraits of friends and family members, many of whom interact with agroecosystems on a daily basis. The idea of symbiosis and collaboration is a recurring theme in the work and the written text that accompanies it. Though it may be presented as a slightly optimistic view of the future of our species, if all we ever see in speculative works is pain and suffering how could we possibly dare to hope for a better future?
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