River Credits
Marjan Verstappen’s installation comes alive after sundown. Through the use of ultraviolet ink, the artist’s drawings of local flora present human viewers with a glimpse of what it would be like to see our surroundings through an insect’s perspective. They ask us to consider our existence with the realities of other living beings.
Verstappen visited the Peel Art Gallery, Museum and Archives to learn about our surrounding region from the perspective of the Credit River. She traced the river in cyanotype – a technique commonly known as “blueprint” that is historically used to reproduce technical drawings, maps, and botanical illustrations. A narrative is laid over the map with ultraviolet ink to reveal the destruction of habitat that occurred during the era of European settlement in the Credit River Valley. These details question the complicated relationships of dependence and sustenance between humans and other life systems with which we co-exist.