11 October 2021 by Ada Muntean
Suzanne Husky is a French-American artist born in Bazas, France in 1975. Her artistic approach questions and analyses man’s relationship with nature from prehistoric times to the present. With a background in horticulture, permaculture and herbalism, Husky is a multimedia artist focused on the dynamic connection between man and the environment. Her interventions are cultural representations of a wide variety of information about ethnobotany and plants.
Using sculpture, installation, photography and film, the artist deals, both visually and conceptually, with the poetic and political interactions between the human being and nature – the earth, plants and animals. Issues related to the exploitation of natural resources, the use of the landscape and globalisation are at the heart of the artist’s multimedia practice. In an interdisciplinary approach, Husky’s concepts question the relationship between mainstream media and the environmental, social and political agenda. The ideals of the 1970’s, the contemporary “back-to-the-land” movements and solitary activism have been her main recent concerns. In her installations, the artist makes use of found or donated recycled materials to create landscapes and social portraits. The materials and her manner of reconfiguring them are visually translated into incisive and humorous representations, reflections on the implications of comfort in our contemporary society.
Suzanne Husky studied at Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux and Merrit College in Oakland. Currently she works with Alain Gutharc Gallery in Paris. She is a founder of the duo Le Nouveau Ministère de l’Agriculture (The New Department of Agriculture) that creates subversive artworks on agroindustry and agtech. Husky has shown in Bay Area Now 5 at YBCA, San Francisco, deYoung Museum, Southern Exposure, Out of the Box Biennale, The Headlands Center of the Arts, Istanbul Biennial etc.
At the Art Encounters Biennial in Timișoara, Husky shows The Pharmacie, an installation under Kasia Redzisz’s curatorial project, located in the Fabric neighbourhood. Kasia Redzisz’s project How to Be Together comprises two exhibitions: a historical research of the artist-nature relationship and its corresponding contemporary analysis. Artists are invited through to look at the self in relation to nature and to imagine another way of coexistence, including elements of land art, ecofeminism and environment-related aspects.
Suzanne Husky has an in situ artistic intervention for Art Encounters, working with the biodiversity of the park in the Fabric neighbourhood. She will create two living corridors, both on the surface and underground, which will stretch between the trees. The underground corridor will involve modernising the soil by stimulating the underground fungal life and microorganisms. The artist will plant a continuous line of shrubs and perennials between the trees. The plantations will spread to create an underground mycelium corridor; the mycelium under a tree can migrate to the new trees that will adapt to the new soil. Some plants will grow from seeds, acorn, oak tree, ash tree. Above the ground, the continuous stretches of planted areas will provide shelter for small birds. Many birds will nest in the shrubs and the organic fertilizers they will leave behind will be excellent for soil enrichment. Shrubs will also shelter migratory birds, while the plants will provide food for the insects, which in turn will pollinate the flowers and feed the birds. The art installation will require human intervention on the planted areas and will include chairs designed by architect Miodrag Stoianov.
Husky was interviewed by agricultural journalist Liviu Gordea. The interview, which will be presented at the Biennial, is about the current state of Romanian agriculture and focuses on topics such as apple production, rain, customised tractors designed for mega farms owned by the United Arab Emirates, changes in EU subsidies and so on.
Suzanne Husky’s artistic approach is a continuous process of creation and adaptation to nature that lays emphasis on working with the environment and challenges the viewers to question man’s relationship and coexistence with nature in the contemporary society.