Abat-Jour is a monumental sculpture and land art, built using “waste” materials.
The work is a site-specific Post-Anthropocene Architecture built to house and enable the growth of local keystone, edible and medicinal plant species; whereby the architectural body functions as both a refuge for the transplanted flora, as well as an enabler of their reproductive capacities. The structure itself—with its central elevated ring of live plants surrounding an opening—allows for wind currents to flow underneath and up through the structure, propelling pollen and dispersing seeds beyond their typical capabilities. The structure also creates space for birds, insects and small mammals, which can find refuge in the structure’s interior or within its elevated garden. As such, the work acts as a collaborative endeavour between human and non-human, whereby the capacity of those endemic plants housed by the construction is boosted by the structure itself as well as by providing niches for secondary inhabiting species to occupy. In doing so, the plant species are better able to spread out and occupy the work’s surroundings over time.
For viewers, the garden held aloft the structure is at first obscured from view, with only brief glimpses of plants apparent from outside at certain angles. However, as one enters the double arch of the installation, the overhead halo of flora immediately comes into view, situating individuals in a diminished position relative to the colony of green stalks, grasses, and flowers overhead. Furthermore, one that enters the work is also placed under-earth, with all of the myriad of connotations that is implied therein. The work’s aesthetic—in its use of reused materials—and design is also reminiscent of the frontier architecture, boardwalks, and remains of old wooden mining devices that can be found in and nearby Dawson City. In this simulation, the work can be imagined within the traditions of an unrealized past, where plants existed as an important collaborator for phytomining, phytoremediation as well as land reclamation.
Plants included in the installation were gently and responsibly transplanted from the site of the June 2025 Dempster Corner Wildfire—where 19,545 hectares of forest near the Klondike Highway burned—as well as from within Dawson City limits. Plants were chosen specifically for their resilience, their importance to the surrounding ecosystem, in addition to their use as food, medicine or both. Examples of plants included in the installation include: bearberry, cranberry, fireweed, Labrador tea, mugwort, sphagnum mosses, wild rose, wild strawberry, and yarrow.
The work is a site-specific Post-Anthropocene Architecture built to house and enable the growth of local keystone, edible and medicinal plant species; whereby the architectural body functions as both a refuge for the transplanted flora, as well as an enabler of their reproductive capacities. The structure itself—with its central elevated ring of live plants surrounding an opening—allows for wind currents to flow underneath and up through the structure, propelling pollen and dispersing seeds beyond their typical capabilities. The structure also creates space for birds, insects and small mammals, which can find refuge in the structure’s interior or within its elevated garden. As such, the work acts as a collaborative endeavour between human and non-human, whereby the capacity of those endemic plants housed by the construction is boosted by the structure itself as well as by providing niches for secondary inhabiting species to occupy. In doing so, the plant species are better able to spread out and occupy the work’s surroundings over time.
For viewers, the garden held aloft the structure is at first obscured from view, with only brief glimpses of plants apparent from outside at certain angles. However, as one enters the double arch of the installation, the overhead halo of flora immediately comes into view, situating individuals in a diminished position relative to the colony of green stalks, grasses, and flowers overhead. Furthermore, one that enters the work is also placed under-earth, with all of the myriad of connotations that is implied therein. The work’s aesthetic—in its use of reused materials—and design is also reminiscent of the frontier architecture, boardwalks, and remains of old wooden mining devices that can be found in and nearby Dawson City. In this simulation, the work can be imagined within the traditions of an unrealized past, where plants existed as an important collaborator for phytomining, phytoremediation as well as land reclamation.
Plants included in the installation were gently and responsibly transplanted from the site of the June 2025 Dempster Corner Wildfire—where 19,545 hectares of forest near the Klondike Highway burned—as well as from within Dawson City limits. Plants were chosen specifically for their resilience, their importance to the surrounding ecosystem, in addition to their use as food, medicine or both. Examples of plants included in the installation include: bearberry, cranberry, fireweed, Labrador tea, mugwort, sphagnum mosses, wild rose, wild strawberry, and yarrow.
DOCUMENTATION OF INSTALLATION:
RENDERINGS OF ORIGINAL DESIGN:
Abat-Jour was constructed during May & June of 2026 in Dawson City, Yukon Territory—in the traditional and contemporary territory of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in—Canada for the Yukon Riverside Arts Festival (YRAF). The project was generously supported by the Klondike Institute Of Art & Culture, STEPS Public Art, as well as the Canada Council for the Arts.
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