Ashley Snook, VHD VHD, 2019. Installation image.

Ashley Snook

VHD VHD

Abstract

VHD VHD is an installation that explores the complexities of our interconnected existences by emphasizing the sensory elements of sight, sound and smell, and by encapsulating aspects of biophilic curiosity, while troubling the desire to retain positive energy.

VHD VHD explores how human and nonhuman species live within and without natural systems amongst landscapes and spacescapes. This installation questions how one can obtain and maintain positive energy in a time of immense destruction. It is known that human proximity to nature has an affective impact on our wellbeing, given that being close to nature can counteract negativity and increase pleasant feelings. However, how can we hold, retain, and perhaps store positive energy on a depleting planet? What possibilities can come from destruction? VHD VHD is an installation that emphasizes realities of human and nonhuman lifecycles and provides opportunities to sit with possible discomfort and contemplation by focusing attention on encapsulated materials that possess individual stories of their own. It offers radical acceptance of the challenge of finding inner calmness during a time of ecological destruction and grief.

Keywords: installation art, sensorial, ecological grief, scent art, biophilia

Created by interdisciplinary artist Ashley Snook in 2019, VHD VHD is an imaginative installation that explores the complexities of our interconnected existences. The concept of the work was inspired by the novel Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino, as well as named after some of the characters in the novel. Cosmicomics is a collection of short stories that entangle scientific “facts” with imaginative storytelling. In particular interest to the concept of VHD VHD is the short story titled “The Distance of the Moon” where explorers seek to discover findings of the moon. Calvino’s writing describing the moon is intricate and magical and is what really influences the many materials and objects that are within the installation space of VHD VHD. While on the moon, the explorers aspire to find moon-milk, which Calvino describes as carrying substances such as “vegetable juices, tadpoles, bitumen, lentils, honey, starch crystals, sturgeon eggs, moulds, pollens, gelatinous matter, worms, resins, pepper, mineral salts, [and] combustion residue.”[1]

Influenced by the many findings in moon-milk, VHD VHD consists of clear, hollow, spherical objects containing organic materials such as plants, crystals, skulls, insects, seeds, feathers, and more. In a dark space, the glass spheres lie on beds of sand, which are highlighted by soft galactical colours of pink, purple, yellow, and blue. The installation also explores sensory elements of sound and smell. Sound recordings of outer space, as documented by NASA, along with undertones of binaural beats play as viewers walk the space. Scent is incorporated by filling the air with essential oils that are believed to promote positive energy with uplifting scents such as lavender, lemon and mint. Inside, the spheres’ findings contain an intimate intertwining of organic materials all wrapped in human hair. In the act of wrapping materials with hair, the artist contemplates interconnected ephemerality as what is contained in the spheres can be observed for its liveliness and/or representation of death.

VHD VHD encapsulates organic material as a way of expressing tendencies of biophilic curiosity while troubling the desire to retain positive energy. Biophilia, a concept used by the recently deceased biologist Edward O. Wilson, suggests that humans are innately drawn to nonhuman species because of seemingly inherent relatability and because we hold a fascination with life. Through its material exploration, VHD VHD displays various organic materials to emphasize life relatability, while attempting to normalize death and decay as we endure an ongoing ecological crisis. This immersive installation explores how human and nonhuman species live within, and without, natural systems amongst landscapes and spacescapes. It questions how one can obtain and maintain positive energy in a time of immense destruction. It is known that human proximity to nature has an affective impact on our wellbeing, given that being close to nature can counteract negativity and increase pleasant feelings. However, how can we hold, retain, and perhaps store positive energy on a depleting planet? What possibilities can come from destruction? VHD VHD is an installation that emphasizes realities of human and nonhuman lifecycles and provides opportunities to sit with possible discomfort and contemplation by focusing attention on encapsulated materials that possess individual stories of their own. It offers radical acceptance of the challenge of finding inner calmness during a time of ecological destruction and grief.

Notes

[1] Calvino, Italo. “The Distance of the Moon.” Essay in The Complete Cosmicomics, 6. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, United States, 2002.

About the Author

Ashley Snook is a Toronto-based interdisciplinary artist and is currently a PhD candidate in the Art and Visual Culture program at Western University in London, Ontario. In her practice, Snook examines interconnectivity between human and nonhuman animals, and vegetal/botanical life. Her research and studio work currently investigate notions of animality. More specifically, her research proposes a historically-informed, post-human perspective regarding animality, which is meant to problematize a spectrum of human-centric, socio-cultural and scientific frameworks. Such frameworks are shown as the hegemonic forces that enabled rampant environmental degradation, and destructive human-animal relationships. This trajectory aims to reconnect a raw sense of intimacy between the human and animal and the surrounding biosphere through sculpture, drawing and experiential/sensorial installation. Snook has shown her work nationally including in exhibitions such as Come Up To My Room at the Gladstone Hotel in 2018 as well as the recent exhibition GardenShip and State at Museum London. Snook has received various awards during her academic studies including most recently a Doctoral Fellowship from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and an Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS). Snook also received the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship (SSHRC) during her MFA at OCAD University in 2015 and 2016.