variegata, Taiessa’s ongoing body of work, offers a tangle of plant cuttings that appear to stretch their leaves toward the light in a sun-soaked greenhouse. These plants are crafted from ivory felt, an inert material intended to foil its organic counterpart. Akin to bleached bone, the specific tone of the felt nods to chimeral variegation in a plant’s leaves. This genetic mutation renders a plant unable to uniformly produce chlorophyl – and can also exponentially increase the selling price of a plant cutting.
While plant collection and propagation may seem a benign pastime, variegata points to the linkages between commercial plant collection, sustained colonial extraction, and 21st century capitalism. Modern European botany as a discipline emerged in the 18th century in tandem with the violent colonization of Indigenous communities and lands. Plants were extracted for study and classification, resulting in the erasure of Indigenous knowledges and the destruction of ecosystems. In the present, plant collection has exploded in popularity. Plant collection is often framed on social media as an aspirational act of self-care, while clippings of certain plant cultivars will sell online for hundreds of dollars. While most houseplants today are cultivated industrially (which presents its own concerns), this cycle of extraction, erasure, and the accrual of capital mirrors its colonial history.
Close inspection of variegata’s plant cuttings offers a glimpse into Taiessa’s exacting process. Each individual leaf is quilted and stitched from sheets of pressed felt – a process that bears some semblance to drawing – and subsequently fixed into stillness with wheat paste. The inevitable slowness of this process is significant. The time, care, and material intuition required resonates with the process of nurturing plants – it is also deliberately and self-reflexively asynchronous with the cadence of our current moment. With this pointed emphasis on care, reciprocity, and moving with slowness and intention, variegata offers a pathway to imagining possible futures divested from capitalist modes of exchange.
variegata was produced with support from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Edmonton Arts Council, and the Harcourt House Artist Run Centre.
IMAGES: Taiessa, "variegata," 2024. Esker Foundation, Calgary. Photo by Blaine Campbell.
Winter 2025 Exhibition Season
Hangama Amiri
PARTING/فراق
Erika DeFreitas
and that break is the one that shows (to shift, a curve, to quiver)
Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi
The blue of the sky depends on the darkness of empty space behind it
PROJECT SPACE
Taiessa
variegata
Megan Feniak
With All Our Vernal Suns
PDFs
Web Resolution Images
Hangama Amiri, "Man with Vase of Tulips," 2024. Courtesy of the artist, and T293, Rome.
Hangama Amiri, "Woman Before a Mirror," 2022. Courtesy of the artist, and T293, Rome.
Hangama Amiri, Portrait of a Woman with Denim Jacket, 2023. Courtesy of the artist.
Hangama Amiri exhibition at Esker Foundation, January 2025. Photo by: Allison Seto.
Hangama Amiri exhibition at Esker Foundation, January 2025. Photo by: Allison Seto.
Hangama Amira, "Man Resting in the Park," 2022. Courtesy of the artist, and T293, Rome.
Hangama Amiri exhibition at Esker Foundation, January 2025. Photo by: Allison Seto.
Erika DeFreitas: "and that break is the one that shows (to shift, a curve, to quiver)," 2025. Photo by: Blaine Campbell.
Erika DeFreitas: "and that break is the one that shows (to shift, a curve, to quiver)," 2025. Photo by: Blaine Campbell.
Erika DeFreitas: "and that break is the one that shows (to shift, a curve, to quiver)," 2025. Photo by: Blaine Campbell.
Erika DeFreitas, "The Black Madonnas of Perpetual Murmurs 1," 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Christie Contemporary, Toronto.
Erika De Freitas, "The Black Madonnas Of Perpetual Murmurs 1, 11, 14," collage, gold leaf, cut on paper. 2023. Courtesy of the artist, and Christie Contemporary, Toronto.
Erika DeFreitas: "and that break is the one that shows (to shift, a curve, to quiver)," 2025. Photo by: Blaine Campbell.
Erika DeFreitas: "and that break is the one that shows (to shift, a curve, to quiver)," 2025. Photo by: Blaine Campbell.
Erika DeFreitas: "and that break is the one that shows (to shift, a curve, to quiver)," 2025. Photo by: Blaine Campbell.
Erika DeFreitas: "and that break is the one that shows (to shift, a curve, to quiver)," 2025. Photo by: Blaine Campbell.
Erika DeFreitas: "and that break is the one that shows (to shift, a curve, to quiver)," 2025. Photo by: Blaine Campbell.
Erika DeFreitas: "and that break is the one that shows (to shift, a curve, to quiver)," 2025. Photo by: Blaine Campbell.
Erika De Freitas, "the pause and mirrored peaks," 3:21 minutes. Single channel video, no sound, 2018. Courtesy the artist and Christie Contemporary, Toronto.
Erika DeFreitas: "and that break is the one that shows (to shift, a curve, to quiver)," 2025. Photo by: Blaine Campbell.
Erika DeFreitas, "she returns in the midst of echoes," 2018. Courtesy
of the artist and Christie Contemporary, Toronto.
Erika DeFreitas: "and that break is the one that shows (to shift, a curve, to quiver)," 2025. Photo by: Blaine Campbell.
Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi, This undreamt of sail is watered by the white wind of the abyss, 2022, installation view, Hamburger Bahnhof. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by: Jens Franke.
Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi: "The blue of the sky depends on the darkness of empty space behind it," 2025. Photo by: Blaine Campbell.
Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi: "The blue of the sky depends on the darkness of empty space behind it," 2025. Photo by: Blaine Campbell.
Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi: "The blue of the sky depends on the darkness of empty space behind it," 2025. Photo by: Blaine Campbell.
Esker Foundation -Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi: The blue of the sky depends on the darkness of empty space behind it
Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi: "The blue of the sky depends on the darkness of empty space behind it," 2025. Photo by: Blaine Campbell.
Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi: "The blue of the sky depends on the darkness of empty space behind it," 2025. Photo by: Blaine Campbell.
Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi: "The blue of the sky depends on the darkness of empty space behind it," 2025. Photo by: Blaine Campbell.
Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi: "The blue of the sky depends on the darkness of empty space behind it," 2025. Photo by: Blaine Campbell.
Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi, film still from "Into The Violet Belly," 2022. 20 minutes. Courtesy of the artist.
