Taryn Walker: decompose this body

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Taryn Walker, "decompose this body," 2022

A swarm of flies. Crawling. The sound of rushing water. A hand trying to wash away the dirt. The smell of wax. Through a multimedia installation experience of light, sound, video, and beeswax preserved screenprints decompose this body. examines Nature’s never ending cycles of both the land and the self, and the processes in which we begin to heal.

Who do we become when we start anew? What parts of ourselves do we lay to rest? What dies? What is given life? As we breathe, so does the land. As we listen, the land speaks. As we speak, the land listens. As the land breathes, we breathe. As we die our bodies become part of the dirt, the water; the land lives. Although perhaps morbid and unsettling to some, there is inherent beauty in this process. We are all connected in this dance.

decompose this body. dives into an incredibly intimate examination of Walker’s relationship to their own ever evolving sense of self, spirituality, and what they have had to let go of to make way for aspects of their identity that are most in alignment with their true sense of self. To begin to heal. And like many of Nature’s cycles with the embrace of the new, the old is washed away and redirected like the channels of a river.

This work is an ode to imagining the many possible futures we have the power to build for ourselves, for our World. A love letter to the complex relationship between ourselves and the universe. Grief, mixed with hope, mixed with the uncomfortable, and the beautiful.

It is Walker’s hope that decompose this body. gives viewers a moment to tenderly reflect and imagine a better World and a more grounded sense of self.

Taryn Walker is a queer, interdisciplinary Indigenous artist of Nlka’pamux, Syilx, and mixed European ancestry whose work explores concepts of identity, tenderness, healing, cycles of life and death, and the supernatural through drawing, printmaking, installation, and video.

In 2018 Walker graduated from the Visual Arts BFA program at UVic. In the fall of this year, they will be beginning their MFA at SFU.

Walker’s work has been presented in spaces and events across Western Canada and beyond. Their artistic research has also been granted support from the Edmonton Arts Council, the Indigenous Curatorial Collective, and the First Peoples Cultural Council.