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The White Maze, 2007–10
Chromogenic Print, 48 × 84 in. (49.5 x 85.5 in. framed)
Edition of 3, 2 AP → Inquire
The White Maze is a large-scale colour photographic print depicting a horizontal field of delicately painted synthetic foliage—an artificial landscape that appears to stretch endlessly, without beginning or end. Each leaf is printed at one-to-one scale, giving the image a monumental presence that evokes a sense of the sublime, as articulated by Edmund Burke: a feeling of awe, vastness, and disorientation in the face of beauty. While The White Maze references the landscape genre—a foundational subject in Canadian art history—it deliberately avoids the postcard-like imagery traditionally associated with it. Instead, the foliage, blanketed in a powdery layer of white paint, has been stripped of specific markers of place, time, and ecology. This monochromatic surface gestures toward themes of erasure and dislocation, inviting viewers to consider how landscapes have historically been identified, territorialized, aestheticized, and mythologized—particularly within the context of settler colonialism and national identity. Visually, the image draws on the compositional strategies of East Asian landscape painting, privileging a fluid, unfolding sense of space over a single-point perspective. The result is a pictorial field that destabilizes spatial orientation and challenges fixed viewpoints.