Leila Sujir
AERIAL
A west coast rain forest seen through a camera mounted on a drone, moving rapidly as if it were a humming bird: it hovers, then zigzags horizontally, then vertically. Spatial microphones mounted on a cablecam up in the tree canopy move across the Emerald Pool in the south Walbran, not far from the bridge. Four white embossed still forest landscapes extend the possibility of inner spaces, for us to step back into ourselves, to contemplate, and to engage with the memory, recording and healing process, while we view, together, this airborne sequence, exploring a forest.
Over the last thirty years, Leila Sujir has been building a body of video art works using a mix of fiction, fantasy and documentary with visual and audio collage techniques. Her video art works have been shown in group shows at the Museum of Modern Art (New York) and the Tate Gallery (Liverpool), as well as galleries all over the world, most recently at the Fotofest Biennial in Houston, Texas, in “INDIA - Contemporary Photographic and New Media Art“ (2018) and at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, British Columbia, in “Supernatural: Art, Technology and the Forest” (2018). In2016, she began working with curator Haema Sivanesan and cinematographer Chris Kroitor on an expanded media work, “Forest!” in the south Walbran old growth forests on Vancouver Island. “Aerial” with XL curator Janine Marchessault and producer Chris Kroitor continues an exploration of those forests. Leila Sujir is chair of the Studio Arts Department at Concordia University, where she teaches in the Intermedia area.