ISABELLE HAYEUR’S DISORIENTATION
BY CHRISTOPHER BLANCHETTE AND JOSHUA CAMERON
ISABELLE HAYEUR is a Quebec-based fine artist whose work critically examines environmental issues around urban development and social conditions. She is particularly interested in exploring, documenting, and echoing the feelings of alienation and disenchantment that result from environmental changes. As an image-based artist, she is internationally known for her photographs and experimental videos. Since the late 1990s, Isabelle has documented altered landscapes, industrial areas, tourist sites, abandoned places, urban fringes, and underprivileged regions. An integral concern of hers is the evolution of land and communities.
Isabelle’s work documents how humans take possession of territories and adapt them to our needs, the process and results of which are not always for the better. We asked her a few questions about her practice. Why is it important for you to document the relationship between humans and nature? I think this relationship is fundamental. Earth is our only home and the conflict between the natural and the man-made has completely transformed the world. Massive urbanization and
industrialization has resulted in impoverished biodiversity and poses a risk to human health. Ecological disasters like the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the garbage slates forming on the oceans are becoming more common. How have you seen this relationship improve or decline over the course of your art practice? I have seen awareness improve a lot, but sadly, further environmental decline has accompanied the understanding. People now pay more attention to environmental issues and the fact that we are facing an ecological crisis. In my early twenties, I worked for Greenpeace, and very few people were aware of environmental problems at that time. Climate change was not a well-acknowledged issue. I think people are now more concerned.
Still, I have met climate change deniers and people who think everything will be all right. Last year I was working in New Orleans and I spoke with some people who believed we should never sacrifice jobs or the economy for environmental concerns. As long as people think that the economy is more important than everything else, we will face enivonmental problems.
“Invasion 02”. From The Underworlds series. photo ED 9
