Paul Kuhn Gallery is pleased to present Jennifer Wanner’s Bower, a two-part project which features plant species at risk that grow on Canadian soil but also live beyond borders. The first part of the project is a stop-motion animation while the second is a large hand-cut paper collage.

In the animation the central plant-character, a threatened aquatic plant called Bolander’s Quillwort, desperately attempts to build a ‘bower’ using fellow plant species at risk. Wanner describes the plant’s frantic efforts as “mirroring humanity’s drive to develop technologies and organizational systems that attempt to restore and protect what we are on the verge of destroying: the natural world – our bower”

In part two, the Bolander’s Quillwort’s futile attempt in the animation leads it to finally decide to genetically modify itself into its own ‘bower’. Wanner’s large hand-cut inkjet paper collage is composed of 151 images of plant species at risk downloaded and printed from the Internet. The collage is float-mounted to give it the appearance of a plant specimen in an Herbarium collection.

The word ‘bower’ is derived from the Middle English word ‘bour’ meaning ‘dwelling’. Wanner reminds us, “Our planet is considered (for the moment) the only dwelling that supports life as we know it and we should respect how we live on it.”

The exhibition will also include other selected works from Wanner’s earlier series, Absentia and Periculum, that have influenced the Bower project.