Sara ANGELUCCI

In Nocturnal Botanical Ontario I orient myself to a close study of plants in my proximity, an area in Southern Ontario protected by a provincial park. Working at night, my visual perception and orientation is ungrounded. Feeling my way through the tall grasses, my senses are on heightened alert. Responding intuitively, I work with the scanner to uncover specimens. I scan plants in ad hoc encounters with luminescent specimens emerging through the darkness. Attracted by my presence and the light, insects appear and interact in creating compositions. The detailed ecologies that emerge reveal something beyond botanical still life or nocturnal landscape. Invisible and layered histories are embedded in these compositions. Indigenous plants grow entwined with foreign/cultivated and invasive species. Considering these compositions closely, my passion and attachment to this place is entangled with deep colonial histories and ongoing commercial interests in the land. Using high-resolution imaging tools, looking closely raises difficult questions. To whom does the land really belong? And how did these plants come to be entwined?