21 February to 28 June 2026
Maria Simmons, Fabian Lanzmaier, Ingrid Bjørnaali, Simon Daniel Tegnander Wenzel
Curated by Darryn Doull
Land Bodies, Decomposing Mass is a cross-Atlantic, audio-visual collaboration that explores the embodiment and translation of peatland knowledge through blending physical engagement with digital interpretations. As part of their collaboration, the artists have visited peat bogs in Finland, Estonia, Norway and Canada. Through recordings of those landscapes they find and interpret naturally created monuments like dead, standing trees held in place by the mires, and portals that connect past and present, the bubbles on the surface, and the subterranean world.
Sculptures, sound, scent and photogrammetry-based methods of digital gathering, depict sites that form new virtual spaces, seeking a re-mystification and a non-quantifiable approach to peatlands. The exhibition juxtaposes a generative sound installation, moving image and sculpture into various combinations, offering alternative perspectives of the translated sites. Throughout the installation, scent unlocks other memories and relations, nudging the installation further into a site of transformation and translocation.
Opening Celebration and Artist Talk
Saturday 21 February, 2:00 to 4:00 p.m.
Artist Talk at 2:30 p.m.
Maria Simmons is a Canadian sculpture and installation artist embracing contamination as an act of collaboration. She collects garbage, buries butter, ferments plants, and nurtures fruit flies. She makes art that eats itself. Simmons holds an MFA from the University of Waterloo and a BFA from McMaster University and is currently undertaking a PhD at Concordia University. Recent exhibitions include the Plein Sud Contemporary Art Gallery (Canada), Visual Art Centre of Clarington (Canada), Lydgalleriet (Norway), Tromsø Center for Contemporary Art (Norway), and the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia. She has completed residencies across Canada and Europe including Fogo Island Arts, Est-Nord-Est, Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts, and Mustarinda. Her work has been featured in Le Sabord, CBC Arts, Esse, Peripheral Review, and Public Parking.
Fabian Lanzmaier is a musician and sound artist living in Vienna. He is currently focusing on live performances that incorporate real-time audio synthesis and multichannel speaker setups, as well as site-specific audio installations, which often emerge from collaborative processes. He is interested in the possibilities and surprises that arise when working with systems and situations involving chance and unpredictability. He studied at the Institute for Electroacoustic Composition in Vienna and is an active member of the collective “velak” (event series for experimental music and soundart). Recent projects and residencies include: Artist in Residency at Wave Farm – NY, composition commission through INA - grm - Paris, AV - Performance at Fridman Gallery - NYC, Artist in Residency at EMS – Stockholm, Artist in Residence at Maajaam - Estonia, Artist in Residence at USF – Bergen.
Ingrid Bjørnaali is an artist based in Oslo, Norway, who records and re-animates landscapes through an intimate, ground-level, crawling approach. Seeking to learn from our co-existing species, she works with analog photography, sound recordings, and photogrammetry, and these translations take form as video installations, sculptures, and texts. Her work explores the omnipresence of the digital in our experience of the world, as well as technology’s inability to articulate the complexity of living matter. She obtained an MFA from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, with parts spent in Helsinki at Kuvataideakatemia’s “Time and Space Arts”. Recent exhibitions include Kunstsilo, Stavanger Art Museum, EKKM Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia, Fabbrica Del Vapore (Milano), the Nordic House (Reykjavik) and Screen City Biennial (Berlin).
Simon Daniel Tegnander Wenzel is an artist and musician based in Oslo, Norway, working across performance, installation, scent, sound, and moving image. His practice traces forgotten traditions and alternative technologies displaced by contemporary life, with a particular interest in natural materials and their cultural and historical significance. Through the activation of materials, participatory processes, and experimental narratives, Wenzel reframes relationships to land, ritual, labor, and time, encouraging embodied forms of knowledge and collective experience. Wenzel holds an MFA from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. Recent activity includes an artist residency at Artica Svalbard, compositions for Theater F (Norway), and exhibitions and works at Gammel Strand (Copenhagen, Denmark), Buffalo AKG Art Museum (USA), the Estonian Museum of Contemporary Art (EKKM, Tallinn), and the Venice Biennale (Italy).
This exhibition is supported by the Office for Contemporary Art Norway and by the Austrian Embassy Ottawa.
Imagery: Maria Simmons, Ingrid Bjørnaali, Fabian Lanzmaier, Land Bodies, Decomposing Mass (still image), 2023. 3-channel, 3D animated video, 22:16 min. Image courtesy of the artists.
Maria Simmons headshot by Jason Normore. Fabian Lanzmaier headshot courtesy of the artist. Ingrid Bjørnaali headshot by Sasha Azanova. Simon Daniel Tegnander Wenzel headshot by Tuva Heger-Bratterud.
