Un-camouflaging
Forms of Awareness (Un-camouflaging), 2012-2014
performance-based series
ghillie suit, photographs, video
Photos: Finn Arbor and Cherry Wood.
Though the ghillie suit's precise purpose is to blend in, Bartol's version is out of step with its environment. In this way, she effectively exposes both how our "communion" with nature is frequently performed for the purpose of inflicting violence and control, as well as the vast distance between our human world and the natural one. - Kimberly Phillips, Far Away So Close, Part III exhibition publication
In Forms of Awareness: Ghillie Suit, military camouflage is repositioned in the open air of suburban neighbourhoods. Photographed primarily in Windsor, Ontario, on the traditional territory of the Three Fires Confederacy of First Nations (Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi), Ghillie appears in parks, backyards, trails, naturalized areas, and spaces slated for suburban development, attempting to blend into her surroundings but often failing.
Drawing partly from Bartol’s Scottish settler ancestry, Ghillie plays with the histories and meanings carried by her name. In Scottish Gaelic, ghillie has been used to describe a servant, attendant, or lad, while the Ghillie Dhu is a wild figure associated with forests. Against the ghillie suit’s militarized and masculine associations, Ghillie becomes a shifting, ambiguously gendered figure, moving between human and plant, masculine and feminine, concealment and exposure. She provokes reactions ranging from fear and bewilderment to laughter, while at other times remaining entirely unseen.
