Lady of Fire and other shapes of landscapes to come

Winnipeg Free Press

2 days ago

Opinion
In the early spring, well before out-of-control wildfires tore through northern Manitoba and Ontario, well before the snow had even melted, I went to see Marcel Dzama's Ghosts of Canoe Lake in its final days at Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art.
The works comprising the exhibition were inspired by the iconic Canadian landscape paintings by the Group of Seven, but if the Group of Seven's beloved jack pines were on fire.
The destruction wrought by climate change was top of mind for the Winnipeg-born artist when he created these works — 'It was my fear of what we're doing to the environment and how we're just throwing away one of the most important and beautiful things,' he told me in an interview before the exhibition opened — and one cannot paint modern landscapes without grappling with modern anxieties.
But no painting from Ghosts of Canoe Lake captures Manitoba's current reality better than Lady of Fire, an arresting, large-scale diptych of a flame-haired woman in a swirling red dress. Her head is thrown back and her eyes are wild as she basks in an inferno that is swallowing up the landscape behind her.
Stare at it long enough and you'll notice there are ghostly figures in the flames, and the terrible snarling faces of fanged, demon-lions.
The sky in the painting is inky and dark, but we know from the photos of Lynn Lake — or the photos from Jasper, Alta., in 2024, or the photos from any of the record-breaking Canadian wildfires of 2023 that sent landmark-obscuring smoke down into New York City, where Dzama lives, or the photos from Lytton, B.C., in 2021, or, or, or — that a dark sky doesn't necessarily mean it's nighttime.
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From 1920 to 1933, the artists who made up the Group of Seven — whose ranks eventually swelled to more than seven — were captivated by Canada's wild and vast landscapes. Their art movement was rooted in nationalism following the First World War; they are widely credited with creating a legible Canadian art identity distinct from European styles.
But of course, Canada's landscapes weren't just documented — or was it, let's be clear, discovered — by settler artists. Indigenous artists have been making art about the land since time immemorial and continue to do so, with many contemporary Indigenous artists documenting human-made changes to the landscape and environment.
There are too many examples to list here, but I think of Inuk artist Tarralik Duffy's works that comprised Gasoline Rainbows, her solo exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. She creates pop art inspired by China Lily soy sauce bottles and jerry cans — nostalgic, ubiquitous and plastic, jarring on the northern landscape.
'There's something that's so permanent about southern packaging. Everything that we had as Inuit in the past would just go back to the earth, and then these things have a permanence that is dangerous — as dangerous as the fuel in the can,' she told me at the time.
So many Indigenous teachings tell us that we are meant to be stewards of the land, caretakers for subsequent generations. We inherit it, then we pass it on.
People will no doubt continue to deny that the devastating wildfire season Manitoba is in is the result of climate change. Forest fires are a natural part of a landscape's life cycle, they will protest, not accounting for the fact that there are more storms (which means more lightning), drier conditions, hotter temperatures and shorter winters. Bigger fires.
Some day, those landscapes will only exist in paintings. The Lady of Fire will have reduced them all to ash.
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In 2010, American writer Nora Ephron published her last book, I Remember Nothing: And Other Reflections. Two lists close the book: What I'll Miss/What I Won't Miss. It doesn't explicitly say, but it is explicitly clear: they are lists about being alive.
Ephron knew she was sick when she made these lists; the rest of the world, including those close to her, did not.
Her illness was a viciously guarded secret, an idea that some people had trouble squaring with the woman for whom 'everything is copy.'
She died two years later.
It's too easy to take things for granted — especially things such as trees, or landscapes or seasons. Our summers moving forward will look less and less like the summers of our past without some dramatic intervention. So this is my version of Ephron's list.
What I'll Miss (When Summer
Is Just Always This)
MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS FILES
No painting from artist Marcel Dzama's recent Ghosts of Canoe Lake exhibition better
captures Manitoba's current reality than Lady of Fire.
Clear blue — true blue — skies
Sunshine the colour of butter
The perfume of cedar and moss in the bush
Stands of shimmering jack pines
reflected in a lake
Cool mornings
The idea of cool mornings
Fresh, rain-scented breezes
Spiderwebs bejewelled in dew
Bees
Wednesdays
A weekly look towards a post-pandemic future.
The idea of bees
Birdsong
The smell of campfire as comforting instead of foreboding
Summer
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Jen ZorattiColumnist
Jen Zoratti is a columnist and feature writer working in the Arts & Life department, as well as the author of the weekly newsletter NEXT. A National Newspaper Award finalist for arts and entertainment writing, Jen is a graduate of the Creative Communications program at RRC Polytech and was a music writer before joining the Free Press in 2013. Read more about Jen.
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