Svima: Leon Lai
- Mixed digital media | 2020
- Giclée print with archival inks
- Signed limited edition of 3
- 18"x 24"(46 x 61 cm)
- White frame
Chock-full of vitamins, minerals, and fiber, kelp is a distinct feature on Vancouver Island beaches. These versatile forests carry marine life and imagination to shore. Barnacles on sculpted limestone, pod-like bladders that burst, sometimes releasing pathogens from the ocean, leave shapely vestiges that together suggest an otherworldly past life.
This piece is part of our exhibition Soft Shield | Allegorical Spaces by Svima as part of DesignTO Festival 2022.
Like cells encased in their membranes, communicating mysteriously with one another and the body as a whole, humans are beginning to interface with our spaces more intimately. Our spaces are becoming responsive to us, and in many ways, are beginning to know us.
In Soft Shield, Svima explores the responsive, pliable, flexible, biophilic, and biomorphic. The works examine how spaces relate to wellbeing, physical and mental health, storytelling, and the natural environment. Conceived as a series of allusive narratives where each space tells a story, the works investigate notions of self and perception, using vivid environments as allegories for various facets of contemporary existence.