Durham 
Art Gallery

Prairie Invasions: A Homecoming is a solo exhibition of panoramic lightbox-photographs, drawings and sculpture by artist Emily Neufeld, co-presented with the Durham Art Gallery and the University of Waterloo Art Gallery. In advance of the exhibition, the artist traveled from North Vancouver to West Grey, Ontario to immerse herself in the local landscape and community as she created site-responsive work that integrates with the existing work from this cumulative project. In this final installation of the ‘Prairie Invasions’ exhibition-trilogy, Neufeld continues to challenge nostalgic narratives around domesticity and the complex history of colonization in Canada.

 

For over 8 years, Neufeld has been performing interactive interventions in abandoned, rural farmhouses to instigate her thoughtful interpretations of the lives once lived therein. The resulting gallery installations respond candidly to the objects and derelict dwellings with which she engages. The work breathes new life into the remnants of domestic homes, thereby capturing an achingly familiar peek into the subtle cracks in nostalgia. When walking through the carefully curated installations, we are reminded that nothing is as it once was and in fact, that perhaps it never was as ideal as we might remember.

 

Though this project first began in British Columbia in 2015, the seeds of this work were ultimately sown by the artist’s great grandparents, industrious Mennonite farmers who were displaced from their homes and immigrated to Canada from Russia in 1874. Subsequent displacement of Indigenous People and land practices here on Turtle Island revealed the divergent relationships to land held by Settler and Indigenous cultures. Accordingly, Neufeld’s research probes these entangled histories through her own migratory heritage. Prairie Invasions marks three key Mennonite settlements across Canada starting in British Columbia, then to Alberta and now concluding here in Ontario where it spans the rich agricultural corridor between partner galleries in West Grey and Waterloo.

 

By tapping into the magnetic lour and mystery inherent to abandoned buildings, Neufeld’s large-scale photographs compel viewers to look unflinching at conventional narratives that depict ‘Nature’ in opposition to domestic life. The work embraces the encroaching reclamation of buildings by the surrounding environments and blurs the boundaries between indoors and out.

 

Prairie Invasions probes the intertangled relationships between environments and the people who inhabit(ed) them while avoiding the temptation to romanticize a nostalgic ideal of ‘the good old days’. Instead, this exhibition embraces the complexities, layers and contradictions that entangle the beautiful and the grotesque elements that make up domestic ecosystems and shared histories.

 

 

Artist's Statement

The work in Prairie Invasions: A Homecoming interlaces abandoned farmhouses with the history of their inhabitants and creates a moment of pause and empathy for the lives that took place in these specific sites, but also for the land that the houses are built upon. Humans are changing our landscape at an increasingly rapid rate. On Turtle Island specifically, the relatively recent colonial occupation has left tremendous impacts on people, communities, languages and cultures, as well as homes, gardens, forests, plains and fields. The multitude of settlers that now live here brought a world of flora and fauna to this place. Some of them are invasive species, while others have naturalized and are beneficial contributors to the communities that are already here. Prairie Invasions asks viewers to consider how each of us participates in the multiple communities we are a part of, both human and non-human alike. Can we learn from the dandelion and enrich the ecosystems we are part of?