Artist Talk - Liz Zetlin

(my evolving relationship with nature from toddler to octogenarian)

Liz Zetlin’s More Than Human unfolds as an immersive four-channel video installation, filmed over the course of a year in her local garden. Each projection corresponds to a season, unfolding chronologically as shifting light and colour trace the passage of time, from frost giving way to thaw, to blossoms opening into dense summer abundance, and autumn’s gradual return to stillness. Within these projections, the garden becomes a dynamic, entangled ecosystem—native and non-native species interwoven in dense, living textures, animals and insects flickering through the frame, and a layered soundscape blending composed rhythms with ambient local sounds.

The exhibition is grounded in the concept of “more-than-human,” a concept articulated by philosopher David Abram to describe the vast, animate world that exceeds human perception which yet sustains it. Rather than positioning humans as separate from or dominant over nature, Abram emphasizes our embeddedness within a living, interdependent field of plants, animals, and ecological forces. In Zetlin’s work, this perspective is made palpable: plants communicate through electrical impulses translated into sound, pollinators move with agency and purpose, and the garden itself emerges as a network of relations rather than a passive backdrop. The scale of the projections further destabilizes human-centered perception, rendering a moth monumental and a leaf expansive, and asking viewers to encounter them not as minor details but as vital presences within a shared world.

And if you've made it this far, a reminder to save the dates: April 25th extravaganza of a day and May 9th from 11 AM to noon at the TOM for my artist talk.