La Guilde is delighted to be participating for the first time in the Art Toronto fair from October 23 to 26, 2025! This exhibition on the theme of the environment brings together the work of artists Martine Bertrand, Marie-Andrée Côté, Mattiusi Iyaituk, Pat Kane, Andreas Krätschmer, Bettina Matzkuhn and Linda Swanson. Come see us at booth A06!
This exhibition draws on our commitment to working with contemporary artists who explore handmade techniques, imagery and stories that reflect on our connection to land and territory. Their artistic explorations are framed within ecological, sociological, spiritual and political considerations and histories.
These artists sculpt, draw, weave and embroider. They use earth, stone, wood, antlers, natural fibers, beeswax and photography to express their engagement and relationships with nature and living on the land.
Bettina Matzkuhn and Marie-Andrée Côté, reflect on the impact of human activity on biodiversity and the balance of ecosystems. Matzkuhn through delicate yet complex and powerful embroidery questions human interference on landscapes: from tracing steps on footpaths to the melting of glaciers and massive forest fires. With her porcelain series Petites natures fragmentées (Small Fragmented Natures) Côté explores the sorrow facing the loss of botanical biodiversity.
But despite the destruction, there is still inspiration to be found in the strength and resilience of nature. Andreas Krätschmer explores the human condition and themes of strength, fragility and resilience through his work with locally salvaged wood. He turns the material while it is still green, allowing the drying process to become an integral part of creation. Through the controlled use of fire, he amplifies the natural tensions that arise as the wood dries, embracing the cracks, distortions, and imperfections that emerge through this transformation. For him, the wood’s evolution mirrors the human condition.
Linda Swanson is interested in the mysteries of the world that resist our understanding, and specifically the mystery behind the transformation of matter. With her slug series she wants to demonstrate how decay is essential to renewal and how nature as we’d like it to be is always overtaken by nature as it is. We don’t want slugs in our garden, but they appear anyway. As they eat the garden, they are regenerating it. In the same line of thought, cockroaches have the same ability to transform matter. They are warriors who have the power to outlive humanity and even if they arouse disgust, their resilience is powerful.
Resilience and the relationship with the environment is also intimately linked to Indigenous cultures and identity. This is illustrated by the work of photographer Pat Kane, who documents the lives of Indigenous communities in the Northwest Territories. The photographs presented here are part of a larger book and exhibition project entitled, Here Is Where We Shall Stay, which engages with colonial damage and control on Denè people and territories and the resilience - human, animal and botanical - of his subjects.
Martine Bertrand offers a more poetic vision through a semi-abstract iconography, using fiber, paper, and beeswax, instinctively seeking connections between people and with the universe around them. Internationally renowned artist Mattiusi Iyaituk expresses Inuit spirituality through human and animal forms sculpted in stone, caribou antlers and other natural material.
