At first glance, it seems that the four inverted images on the walls of the Canadian Museum of Nature are completely black. Upon closer inspection, one’s gaze is drawn up towards the contrasting white snow hiding at the top of the photographs.
The photographic series is entitled “Nox Borealis,” which is Latin for Arctic night, and is based on shots photographer Andrew Wright made in the Arctic during the past two years.
“It’s an attempt to recreate the Arctic panorama at more or less a one-to-one scale and make photographs that are starting to become objects,” Wright said, adding that this creates the “disorientation you feel when you’re in a very strange and unfamiliar situation like the Arctic.”
Wright is a visual arts professor at the University of Ottawa and an international multimedia artist. His works have taken him to the Arctic to explore the unknown. The themes of nature, and art and delving into their mysterious relationship is the premise behind Preternatural, a contemporary art exhibit that runs at the Canadian Museum of Nature until Feb. 12.
“I’m interested in remote places where cameras can’t normally go, but it’s harder and harder to do that because cameras can go everywhere now,” said Wright, who has been photographing nightscapes for the past decade.
Preternatural combines the natural with the surreal through photography, video and art installations, said curator Celina Jeffery.
Preternatural is defined as beyond natural and can refer to the divine and supernatural as well. Like the relationship between nature and art, preternatural itself is very difficult to peg, but that’s the point of the exhibition, said Jeffery, who is also an art professor at the University of Ottawa.
“Most people read it and they don’t understand what it means,” she said. “That was actually the point because it was always a term that meant to defy classification, it meant to have that question mark.”
The exhibition takes place at three locations, with each venue focusing on a separate concept.
“The Canadian Museum of Nature looks at contemporary art and the 21st century mediation of nature. The deconsecrated St. Brigid’s Church venue allowed me to invite artists to specifically engage with the spiritual context,” Jeffery said.
