Kingston Floodwater

About Kingston Floodwater

Every spring, the Great Lakes swell with rain water and threaten to flood the Ontario shoreline. In this photograph taken by Shani Mootoo she has captured the gentle pattern of the rising waters and juxtaposed it with the hard textures of man-made materials—a concrete wall and a submerged rusting steel beam. Is this abstract image a statement on how we impact and change the landscape? This framed giclee print is editioned, 1/8.

"As we travel through the land, we inevitably become tourists in our own land, not believing that we are "there" until we arrive at the beautiful, already vetted view we recognize from mass media. In my project, I have chosen to undo this by looking down, rather than off into the distance, to the touristic vistas that have been photographed and painted again and again." Shani Mootoo

An accomplished writer, filmmaker, painter and photographer Shani Mootoo earned a BFA from the University of Western Ontario, and an MA in English from the University of Guelph. Her novels have been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Giller Prize. Mootoo's paintings have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions locally and internationally, most notably at the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Queen’s Museum in NYC, the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, and at the Venice Biennale. Shani Mootoo was born in Ireland and raised in Trinidad. She lives in Prince Edward County, Ontario.