Genres: Installation

  • Critters Chorus, Cycle 1

    Whirring and flashing in the night sky. Wild foliage on a moist forest floor, rapidly passing by. Nervous encounters at a redwood tree, gurgling chatter with turkeys at dusk. Casually coiffed horses, unpredictable flying objects and flapping rotors. Speckled skin scrabbles, covered in lush ferns. Swirling fog, dripping haze, old man’s beard, light – diffracted. Sassy badgers, strings and figures. Critters Chorus, Cycle 1 is the first part of an ongoing project, developed while delving into unfamiliar habitats. Lead by questioning the so-called “species problem”, Truttmann investigates the (im)possibilities of taxonomic categorization of living organisms from an artistic point of…

  • Memory Rituals [Part Two]: Memory of Trees

    The second in an ongoing, annual series. Thinking about remembering, about forgetting, and about the memory of trees.

  • Endless Thirst

    Endless Thirst is a deep dive into the otherworldly and misunderstood bog biome. Filmed in Canada, it draws attention to the harm inflicted on these ancient wetlands. An aerial view of a bog in its natural state suddenly sinks into the unimaginable, then appears to evaporate into ghostly images of Sphagnum moss (a bog’s keystone species) imprinted on 16mm film. Endless Thirst alludes to the bog’s reliance on water for survival and humanity’s unquenchable desire for resource and supply. It examines the entanglement of human and more-than-human processes that link to the climate crisis.

  • Untitled Film Disinfection Project I

    As Borges once said, “Censorship is the mother of metaphor.” This 16mm structural film explores how state control breeds its own linguistic and visual resistance. Created in response to China’s “zero-COVID” policy—with its harsh lockdowns, relentless testing, and severe restrictions that tragically culminated in the Ürümqi fire—this project treats developed image-less Ektachrome as an “unclean” object in need of cleansing. By applying chlorine dioxide to film surfaces—following government disinfection guidelines during the pandemic—the work transforms physical material into a metaphor for censorship and information control in mainland China. Untitled Film Disinfection Project examines the delicate intersection of public health measures,…

  • We will talk about this after the last air raid alert stops

    This film, shot within a game simulation, focuses on the opposition between culture and nature and the possibilities of dealing with obsolete mechanisms of environmental exploitation. It’s a utopia about a post-war city that launches a recultivation program. The program is an attempt to create a new society where the aims of people do not stand in the way of the aims of other people, trees, rivers, chipmunks, mushrooms…” The game simulation was used as a platform to develop a speculative scenario in which humanity survives the challenges of the current century. Looking at the dystopias of the last century,…

  • Husbandry

    Mary Imrie (1918 – 1988) and Jean Wallbridge (1912 – 1979) operated their architecture firm—the first run by women in Canada—at Six Acres, the home they built for their work and life together overlooking the North Saskatchewan River in west Edmonton. When Mary Imrie passed away, she bequeathed the records of their remarkable architectural practice and adventurous life, along with their home, to the province of Alberta. With a title borrowed from a telegram in the collection, GLAD YOU CLOSER HOME / NEW WHITE WHISKER MARY is Cait McKinney and Hazel Meyer’s immersive exhibition that playfully imagines and speculates in…

  • Aunt Harriet

    Aunt Harriet is a meditative moving portrait exploring introspection, healing, and aging. Set against the backdrop of rural Ontario it deepens the memory of Black lives, bridging past and present – history and myth.

  • Salvage Archives

    Salvage Archives continues Rufelds’ research into cultural and subcultural expressions of late capitalist alienation, and the forms of collective storytelling that take shape under the shadows of unjust material systems. Told in a hybrid narrative style, mixing elements of essay film, social realism, and neo-noir, Salvage Archives oscillates between two narrative threads, counterposing a lonely online conspiracy theorist and a disembodied historian of agriculture. The two figures recount their stories in alternating chapters, perversely mirroring each other as they wade into the knotted abstractions of capitalist productive systems, logistics networks, patterns of accumulation, and systemic waste. As both narrators’ grandiose…

  • Private Flowers

    In 1832, a Canadian Infantryman was hanged for making love with another man. The victim’s rank was Private, and his name was Flowers. Commissioned by Toronto History Museums’ Artist Mentorship Showcase: Pride with Mentor Ashley Mckenzie-Barnes with additional support from the open space residency programme at the National Ballet, TD Bank, Pride Toronto and the Ontario Arts Council. Created as part of Awakening with Toronto History Museums Private Flowers is part of a series of art projects by Black, Indigenous and artists of colour, operating under the principles of anti-oppression, anti-colonialism and anti-racism and is part of the City’s efforts…

  • Custom Trailer Series: Austin Powers

    Exploring écriture feminine and the patriarchal biases still present in commercial cinema, “Custom Trailer Series: Austin Powers” reimagines the original Hollywood film through the structure of a starburst quilt pattern. The work exists both as a material object and the visual representation, drawing attention to the materiality of the filmstrip This is the first in a new series that reimagines Hollywood trailers as film quilts. Previous films made from quilts include c: won eyed jail (NYFF 2005) and Athyrium Filix Femina (For Anna Atkins) (NYFF 2016).