"it looked like your BioSuit"

Statement

“it looked like your BioSuit” is a speculative worldbuilding project that I have been working on since September 2022. 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, and they created the BioSuits: living protective garments made of a symbiosis of fungi, moss, lichen, and algae.

This project is supported by research in mycology, agronomy, and ecology, to name a few. Much of the worldbuilding is based in agriculture, as I grew up on a grain farm in rural Manitoba. 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?

MFA Thesis, NSCAD University

K'jipuktuk/Halifax

Thesis Exhibition: Gallery 1, Anna Leonowens Gallery, NSCAD University. April 16th - 27th, 2024.

Full thesis text available at the NSCAD University Library (digital and physical,

summer 2024)