Podcast Episode Details
Back to Podcast Episodes
e203 leslie reid - climate as art
Season 5 Episode 203
- All artists have to be aware of climate because otherwise it's not art (and that's going to piss some people off - Claude Schryer). I think it will. Climate infuses all our responses to everything, to relationships, to our culture, to our history. You can't ignore the climate that it's happening in, and that's why it has to be somehow in the art that you are involved with.
Leslie Reid, an Ottawa based artist and educator, has been influenced by her family’s military background transitioning from political science to art. Her work explores sensory and emotional responses to environments, shaped significantly by a pivotal experience at a decommissioned lighthouse in Newfoundland. It’s a really good story.
This led her to themes of isolation and family tragedy, often incorporating historical and contemporary imagery to document changes in the northern environment.
During our conversation I read to her an excerpt from her artist statement that helped me understand her art practice:
- The works, in painting and also print, photography and video, explore the physical and perceptual sensations of our experience of a site and the signs of lives lived there, working with liminal states of light and space. Through the ambiguities and uncertainties experienced in this visual field, I seek a thought-provoking and resonant emotional response to the act of seeing, and ultimately to being.
We also discussed navigating cultural sensitivities. Leslie shared her reservations about working in the North and the importance of respecting Indigenous narratives. She also recounted her interactions with Inuit voices and the challenge of presenting their stories authentically without appropriation.
Leslie also had some advice for aspiring artists - given that she is a long time teacher of art at the University of Ottawa - to focus on their personal responses to culture rather than conforming to trends, highlighting the importance of internal reflection and the role of climate in shaping their artistic journey.
Overall, Reid stresses the importance of sensory experiences in motivating climate action and values feedback on her work. For example :
- Because it's my senses that have taken me to the work, to the place, to those ghosts, and not wanting to commune with them, not wanting to bring them to the present, necessarily, just to let that lived presence be where it is. It is in our own sensations and until we have sensations within ourselves about climate and what it means, we can't do anything about it. We have to have something that triggers an internal desire to do better, to rescue, even on a very small scale…
After we concluded our conversation Leslie mentioned ‘that all artists must acknowledge climate change in their work’ which I recorded as a coda and have used as the opening quote of this episode. I agree and hope it creates a debate about how climate context shapes all of our responses and relationships - climate in the largest sense of climate - therefore making it an essential element of meaningful art.
Leslie’s recommended readings include:
- US Arctic Research Commission Daily Newsletter (free subscription)
- The Independent Barents Observer (free subscription)
- Our Ice is Vanishing (Sikuvut Nunguliqtuq) by Shelley Wright
- Burning Ice by Cape Farewell - Art and Climate Change
- The Right to be Cold by Sheila Watt-Cloutier
- Published on 1 year, 3 months ago