ODD Gallery Exhibition | UPROOTED by Jaimie Robson
JAIMIE ROBSON | UPROOTED
February 6 – March 14, 2026
ODD Gallery, Dënäkär Zho | KIAC
Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in territory, Dawson City, Yukon
OPENING RECEPTION: Thursday, February 6th at 7PM – 9PM
UPROOTED
Uprooted is an immersive shadow installation that explores notions of collective loss and grief as they relate to impending climate change. The work grapples with wildfires that are wreaking havoc on the landscape and uprooting small communities. The project begins on the forest floor, bringing a microscopic lens to the ground beneath our feet. This up-close perspective serves as an entry point for thinking about larger issues of climate anxiety, uncertainty, and the notion of solastalgia.
Artist Statement
I am an interdisciplinary artist based in Montreal. I use traditional craft-based techniques to create contemporary artworks and installations. The artworks in this exhibition represent my ongoing interest in working with cut paper in relation to elements of light and shadow. Having grown up on BC’s west coast, the mossy forest floor is the most comforting place I can conjure and is one I return to often, both in my imagination and in real life
My work is inspired by the natural world and by the fragility and complexity inherent within notions of home and belonging. Uprooted explores the intersection between these two concerns. The abstracted imagery that makes up these artworks emerged from microscopic explorations of the forest floor. This perspective opened a pathway to exploring climate anxiety, uncertainty and solastalgia – the distress and grief one feels when a familiar environment is altered beyond recognition.
Viewers encounter the work through projected light, activating intricate paper cutouts of imagined natural forms and clustered houses. As shadows shift and expand across the space, small gestures become monumental. The shadowy transformations of scale, movement and complexity invite reflection on themes of vulnerability and resilience, and on the ways our sense of home is shaped, disrupted, and reimagined.
This work builds on the shadow-based work I have been creating with Mere Phantoms Studios over the past twelve years (https://www.merephantoms.com/). It is the first iteration of a longer-term creative-research process.
About Jaimie Robson
Jaimie Robson is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in cut paper/shadow, and porcelain. She uses traditional craft-based techniques to create contemporary artworks and installations. In 2011 she co-founded the artist collective Mere Phantoms, along with Atelier Make, a ceramics studio in Montreal. She completed her BFA at Emily Carr University (2002) and an MA (Media Studies) at Concordia University 2012. She has exhibited in Canada and internationally including the Istanbul Biennial (2013), Brandts Museum (Denmark, 2015), Grunt Gallery (2017), Hamilton Art Inc, and Surrey Art Gallery (2022). Jaimie has led numerous neighbourhood-based public art projects and brings participatory practices elements into her work.
Crédits: Uprooted bénéficie du soutien financier du Conseil des arts du Canada et du Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.
Credits: Uprooted benefits from the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.ritory: Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in territory, Dawson City, Yukon.
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