Anne Riley installs dark matter garden

Gimaakwe Gchi-gkinoomaagegamig atemagad Naadowe miinwaa Anishinaabe aking.

Ne Queen’s University e’tho nońwe nikanónhsote tsi nońwe ne Haudenosaunee tánon Anishinaabek tehatihsnónhsahere ne óhontsa.

Queen’s University is situated on the territory of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabek.

The darkness and softness of soil are vital for plants to take root. Rather than planting, Anne Riley has provided a rich environment for the life that is already here to be nourished.

Riley developed this piece during a residency and exhibition project generated by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, the Arthur B. McDonald Canadian Astroparticle Physics Research Institute and SNOLAB. Riley and other artists were invited to make new work while engaging with physicists, chemists and engineers contributing to the search for dark matter at SNOLAB’s facility in Sudbury, two kilometres below the surface of the Earth.

Anne Riley installs dark matter garden in front of Agnes Etherington Art Centre.

Anne Riley's dark matter garden.

Anne Riley installs dark matter garden in front of Agnes Etherington Art Centre.

SNOLAB may yet be a site for direct detection of dark matter since the two kilometres of rock between the surface of the Earth and the underground lab filters out radiation and other particles for which the experiments are not searching. Riley filters out the “background” of colonial “noise” in science and art to make an energetic space for healing and connecting with human and more-than-human relations.

Anne Riley is a multidisciplinary artist living as an uninvited Slavey Dene/German guest from Fort Nelson First Nation on the unceded Territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-waututh Nations. Her work explores different ways of being and becoming, touch, and Indigeneity. Riley received her BFA from the University of Texas at Austin in 2012. She has exhibited both in the United States and Canada. Currently she is working on a public art project commissioned by the City of Vancouver with her collaborator, T’uy’tanat Cease Wyss. Wyss and Riley’s project A Constellation of Remediation consists of Indigenous remediation gardens planted throughout the city, decolonizing and healing the dirt back to soil. The duo was longlisted for the 2021 Sobey Art Award.