all roses sleep (inviolate light)
all roses sleep (inviolate light) is a collaborative project by artists Alana Bartol and Bryce Krynski exploring how bees and humans perceive, inhabit, and use the prairie landscape. At the centre of the project is an olfactory video shot using ultraviolet imaging, inviting viewers to encounter the landscape through an approximation of a bee’s visual perspective. Moving through pumpjacks, grazing cattle, prairie grasses, and wildflowers, a solitary bee searches and dreams of a rose. In the olfactory version, the video is accompanied by a scratch-and-sniff card that extends the work beyond the screen, drawing together the pleasant and pungent scents of prairie plants, agriculture, and petroleum extraction. The project asks what it might mean to encounter a familiar landscape through another species’ sensory world, and what these entangled ways of seeing, smelling, inhabiting, and transforming the land might reveal about our shared future.
all roses sleep (inviolate light) has taken multiple forms across exhibitions, screenings, public art, and photography. It was first presented at the Art Gallery of Alberta in 2022, curated by Lindsay Sharman, and has subsequently been exhibited at the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies (curated by Lindsay Sharman and circulated by the Art Gallery of Alberta), VivianeArt, Tilted Brick Art Gallery (curated by Marnie Temple), Surrey Art Gallery (curated by Jordan Strom and Zoe Yang), and the Esplande Arts and Heritage Centre (curated by Xanthe Isbister). The video has also screened at film festivals, including Wide Open Film Festival and Images Festival. A public artwork at CF Chinook Centre in Calgary draws on stills and photographs from the series, while individual photographic works are held in public and private collections. Thank you to the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and Alberta University of the Arts for funding support.
Read the Art Gallery of Alberta publication here.
Images: Charles Cousins (courtesy of Art Gallery of Alberta), Kelly Hoffer (courtesy of VivianeArt), Daniel Negatu and Dennis Ha (courtesy of Surrey Art Gallery), and RFJ Productions (courtesy of Esplande Art). Documentation of CF Chinook Centre by Bryce Krynski.
all roses sleep (inviolate light) follows a solitary bee as it flies through prairie landscapes in search of a wild rose. Drawing attention to how we experience the world through our senses, this video blends how bees and humans interact with and know our environments. Shot using ultraviolet, this video explores parts of a bee's visual range, enabling us to see the prairies from a bee’s point of view. A scratch and sniff card allows us to further step into the shoes, or rather the nose, of a bee. With this new perspective, the landscape becomes alien and while some familiar details are lost, new patterns come into focus and familiar flowers become strange and delicious.
The video has a dreamlike quality that raises questions about our consciousness. Are we experiencing the world as a bee? Are we a bee that is dreaming? Are we human and having a dream that we are a bee? Are we a bee that is dying and remembering the best moments of our life? Dizzying views are punctuated by the pleasant and pungent smells of southern Alberta. Pumpjacks, grazing cattle, prairie grasses and wildflowers can be experienced with multiple senses.
Our shared futures are interdependent, and it is vital to begin to see and smell the world differently.
-Lindsey Sharman
Curator, Art Gallery of Alberta