Terra Economicus, 2017-2020 | Studio Will Kwan

Terra Economicus
2017-2020
Installation with painted wood and video projection, 37 minutes, high-definition, looped, black and white, sound
Installation dimensions variable

Video preview link is available upon request.

Terra Economicus engages with two features of Canadian settler identity—Group of Seven landscape painting and cottage paraphernalia of southern Ontario—as ways of seeing and being in the natural environment that are fundamentally tied to ownership and erasure. Many of the Group of Seven’s wilderness scenes depict the Muskoka and Algoma regions of Ontario, areas known today for their recreational cottages. Like so many of the Group of Seven’s unpopulated landscapes, cottage recreation is similarly predicated on the fantasy of the uninhabited and the untouched, land and vistas purged of people and history. The installation consists of a video projection of appropriated drone footage produced by real estate agents for use in virtual property tours playing from behind a berm of dismantled Muskoka chairs (known in the United States as Adirondack chairs), a ubiquitous but banal symbol of cottage life in Canada. The drone camera hovers above the lot to survey the land, then weaves its way through manicured pathways, the boathouse and dock, the verandah, and a Muskoka chair-lined patio. It eventually moves inside, gliding from one staged room after another. The spaces are well-appointed but empty. The footage is disembodied, formulaic, and transactional—a distinctly contemporary form of terra nullius.

Terra Economicus is held in the permanent collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Exhibition history
Terra Economicus, Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Canada, 2020, curated by Leila Timmins.