Workshop with Hua Jin and Alain Cuerrier
INFORMATION
Workshop/ Presentation
Saturday, May 4, 2024
From 2pm - 4pm
At the Montreal Botanical Garden
To reserve your place, send us an e-mail at rsvp@sbcgallery.ca
“you must look, and look, and look... until you are blind with looking.
And out of blindness comes illumination.”
--- Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art
As part of the current exhibition The Things We Cannot See, we invite you to an afternoon of looking, seeing, and knowing through the perspectives of art and science. The event, including a presentation and a workshop section, will be guided by artist Hua Jin in and botanist Alain Cuerrier at the Montreal Botanical Garden.
Hua Jin will present the deep influence that Eastern culture, including the Chinese understanding of landscapes and the meditative viewing experience embodied within Chinese literati ink paintings, have on her works and creative process.
Alain will delve into his research with Indigenous People, sharing their view on climate change. He will introduce the physiological intricacies of plants (stomata/gas exchange, phytoremediation) as well as the kinship we have with landscape and plants through science and poetry.
Joint Landscape (section 4), by Shen Jou, China, 1500s. Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Hua Jin is a Chinese-born visual artist living and working in Montreal, Canada. As a Chinese-Canadian artist, Jin’s way of thinking is inherently rooted in Eastern culture and philosophy. Jin’s interests are nature and landscape. Like an ancient Taoist, Jin is dedicated to the contemplation of the “Way" of being. Jin observes nature with curiosity and is fascinated by the hidden systems propelling the rhythms in the circle of life.
Alain Cuerrier is a Quebec ethnobotanist, poet, translator and teacher. He holds a doctorate in plant classification from the Université de Montréal, with a year at Harvard. He is botanist at the Jardin botanique de Montréal and professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the Université de Montréal.