#1 Fan (Long Run) (2019)

Associate professor of Interdisciplinary Studio, D'Arcy Wilson, has been sharing her work in various exhibitions over the past year. In January 2024, the exhibition Down North closed after touring to the Portland Museum of Art (Maine), the Reykjavík Art Museum in Iceland, and finally Bildmuseet in Umeå in Sweden. Curated by Anders Jansson, Jaime DeSimone, and Markús Þór Andérson, the exhibition was brought together as a North Atlantic Triennial, featuring artists working near and about the North Atlantic. Wilson's project #1 Fan (Long Run) (2019), was presented in the exhibition; a performance-based work, in #1 Fan the artist adopts the persona of Nature's "top fan." Running, cheering, and gushing in sublime settings to express her admiration for the landscape, #1 Fan is clothed in the latest lines of women's athletic wear. Even so, she stands out from the mountain scapes and seems delusional, putting herself in danger and emphasizing how incompatible she is with her surroundings, in spite of her intentions to immerse herself in nature.

D'Arcy Wilson's new work about extinct birds in Canada. This image was taken with kind permission of the Rooms Natural History Division.

As part of Eastern Edge's Gallery's Hold Fast Contemporary Art Festival in St. John's, Wilson shared new work she has been developing about extinct birds in Canada. With support from the Canada Council and Arts NL, Wilson has been creating a photographic record of all the Passenger Pigeon, Great Auk, Northern Curlew, and Labrador Duck specimens that remain in museum collections in Atlantic Canada. Working with the Rooms Natural history division, Wilson installed a baby monitor to share a live stream of their Northern Curlew specimen, as it "sleeps" in its storage locker. Generations ago, these birds visited our province in massive flocks each summer; now, this specimen is the only Norther Curlew that remains. With support from MUN's SSHRC Explore grant, Wilson has been doing archival research about these lost birds, to understand how they are remembered and recorded in our public institutions, and if reading the preserved accounts of 19th century colonial settlers can help us feel closer to the birds, or even farther away.

Nightwatch (2011)

Wilson exhibited her series of photographs Night Watch in the group exhibition Etendre la nuit, curated by Josianne Poirier for la Fondacion Grantham. The Grantham Foundation, located outside of Montréal in the community of Saint-Edmond-de-Grantham, facilitates artist exhibitions and residencies that focus on environmental concerns, and Eteindre la nuit presented works about ecological darkness. In Nightwatch (2011) Wilson engaged in a nightly ritual while participating in an art residency at the Banff Centre. Each night at dusk, she would walk into the mountain forest alone until the moment she felt afraid. She would then document the moment with a photograph. The process stopped abruptly due to cougar sightings in the area and public advisories to travel in groups.