Soft Rebellion describes a strategy of resistance where the “mycelial strategy of weaving beneath the surface unsettle(es) rigid structures with slow, persistent entanglement”.* This exhibition develops and deploys artistic methodologies of rewilding the imagination in order to reclaim our shared inheritance of connection and place in the natural world. Inherent in artist Holly Ward’s process is a critical examination of the systematic commodification and destruction of the living world which we collectively inhabit, and an expression of resistance to the dominant forces of colonial and capitalist exploitation. 

Refusing the dominance of visual representations of ‘nature’ as pastoral landscape, this body of work explores touch as a primary mode of encounter. For the artist, this offers an opportunity to develop relational and affective immersive encounters with more-than-human sentience. Presented in the exhibition are artifacts of embodied and, sense-driven engagements with specific ecosystems; ancient old growth forests in the traditional, unceded Indigenous territories of Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations, and second-growth forests edging clearcut and wildfire-ravaged areas in Secwepemcúl'ecw territory, that are currently under threat of extinction.

Exploring material processes of foraging, frottage, analogue photogram and direct casting, the artist presents speculative attempts to communicate the reciprocity of these situated ecologies and life-forms.Driving this process is an inquiry into the role of the collective imaginary in the development of shared duties of care to, and for, the natural world and to our collective futurity.

* Shannon Willis, The Mycelial Art of Soft Rebellion: Manifesto for a Slow Resistance Movement, Kosmos Journal for Global Transformation, Vol25, Issue 2.)

Holly Ward (b.1973, St. John, NB) is an interdisciplinary artist working with sculpture, multi-media installation, architecture, video and drawing as a means to examine the role of aesthetics in the formation of new social realities. She is based between Takaronto/Toronto, ON, and Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc/Heffley Creek, BC. Ward has produced solo exhibitions at Artspeak, the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery, the Kelowna Art Gallery, Or Gallery, YYZ Gallery, Republic Gallery, Volta 6 Basel, and others.  She has participated in group exhibitions in Canada, Chile, England, Mexico, the US, Norway and South Korea.  Publications include Lost & Found (Varley Art Gallery, 2024), Infrastructures of Power and Resistance (Kelowna Art Gallery, 2023), Planned Peasanthood (Kamloops Art Gallery, 2021), Volumes (Blackwoods Gallery, 2015), Every Force Evolves a Form (Artspeak, 2012), “For Now, on Holly Ward’s Persistence of Vision,” a critical essay in Jeff Derksen’s After Euphoria (JRP Ringier Press, 2013), and others. Her work has been collected by the Vancouver Art Gallery, Fogo Island Arts, and Scotiabank.  Public Commissions include Lost & Found (with Kevin Schmidt, City of Markham Public Art Program, 2024), Cosmic Chandelier (UniverCity at SFU, Burnaby, 2016) Monument to the Vanquished peasant (Western front, Vancouver) (2016), and The Wall (CBC and the Vancouver Heritage Foundation, 2011). Ward is an Associate Professor in York University’s Visual Arts program.