ARTICLE CONTRIBUTED BY SSNAP
The Salt Spring National Art Prize (SSNAP) community is excited to welcome Lynn Kodeih to Salt Spring Island this week as she begins her residency.
Kodeih was a finalist in the SSNAP 2023/24 competition with her piece titled Impossible Garden and chosen by jurors from those who applied for the residency opportunity.
In her recent project — Récits de plantes #2 (2021-2024) — the immigrant artist creates a way to transport house plants from her home country. Over the course of her first year in Canada, she collects species of house plants she owned in her country of origin, makes cuttings for propagation, covers them with liquid clay and fires them. In an attempt to circumvent the regulations of the Canada Border Services Agency, the artist transforms living matter into objects and relocates it. Only imprints remain, crumbling to the point of disappearance. Questioning notions of states and borders, the work investigates her immigrant position in a country haunted by its colonial history.
Kodeih is an artist/researcher born in Beirut and based in Montréal (Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang). Focusing on the interweaving of art and politics, her practice is at the intersection of textuality and auto-theory, video and installation. She is interested in the notions of territory and borders from a decolonial perspective.
Her practice has been supported by several scholarships and grants, including from the Canada Council for the Arts. Kodeih is the recipient of the 2024 Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art. Her work has been shown in numerous group exhibitions in Canada and abroad, including La Galerie de l’UQAM (Montreal), SAW gallery (Ottawa), Kunstbanken Performance Festival (Norway), Rotterdam Film Festival (Netherlands), Transart Triennale (Berlin), Home Works – Ashkal Alwan, Beirut Art Center and Beirut Art Fair (Lebanon).