Recalling Your Presence While Calling Your Name attempts to reconstruct a local history of wildlife lost, and to rekindle a mutual recognition between the city and its wilderness past and present.
There is no photographic record to describe the ancient forest that was once rooted where the city of Halifax stretches today. Originally a small pocket of the Acadian forest (blanketing the Atlantic Provinces), all of its original self is lost— it has been cleared to make way for an urban centre and its people. Early settlers of the Halifax peninsula lived beside black bears, caribou, wolves, flying squirrels, and porcupines and the city was flanked by trees that stretched as high as fifteen stories. Now it is all gone: we are never to know this hinterland and we shall never encounter the myriad of animals that once lived in our midst.
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This project is part of Halifax Regional Municipality’s Point Pleasant Park Residency Initiative. Location: Point Pleasant Park and the Khyber Centre for the Arts, Halifax, NS
By: D’Arcy Wilson
D’Arcy Wilson is a Halifax-based interdisciplinary artist working primarily in performance. Her work has been exhibited across Canada, and she is the recipient of grants from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, The New Brunswick Arts Board, and the Canada Council.