Long before the concept of the Anthropocene became a concern, artists in Canada were grappling with the country’s colonial and environmental history, using photography to respond to and express their social, emotional, or political perceptions of land. These traditions and visions, by confronting and feeding upon each other, have developed according to particular perspectives on land: an internal perspective, which seeks to bring forth experiential and subjective readings, as well as an external position of photographer as outsider, recording transformations as neutral or critical observer. In between, (inside/outside) lies work which explores the absences in the land, that takes the form of land reclamation, and aims to activate places within their histories of human and animal belonging. Through the exhibition, Karla proposes to situate the viewer within the social, cultural, and political land of Canada in 2018 by asking the question: are you inside or out?
