Fire is the Spirit of the Matter | Lisa Cristinzo
October 4 - 31 in the Likely General Gallery - 389 Roncesvalles Avenue, Toronto
FIRE IS THE SPIRIT OF MATTER
New FireWorks by Lisa Cristinzo
This work surfaced while on a trip to Lake Superior Provincial Park, in Robinson-Superior Treaty territory on the traditional territory of the Anishnaabeg.
Gaston Bachelard states in his book The Psychoanalysis of Fire, “the impulse towards fire, that is brought about by friction, is the need for shared warmth”. Fire takes two and never acts alone. My work reveals the many facets of fire, as it interdependently shifts with our own social, political, and ecological ideologies throughout history. My research into fire includes use and substitution in domestic spaces, fire in warfare, current wildfire events, Indigenous fire keeping, fire prevention and firefighting strategies as well as its mythic history. The subject matter for this current body of work came to me while staying in a stone cabin. I started each morning by collecting kindling and lighting a fire in the wood stove, and soon came to see the pieces of wood, newspaper, burnable objects, and ash as triangular compositions suitable for painting, and in tandem, burning.
In, FIRE IS THE SPIRIT OF MATTER, fire is positioned as energy, moving between and within material landscapes. Our surroundings consist of two categories, of energy and of matter. Matter has mass and occupies space. Energy animates
and responds to matter. Fire is the animator of material, like a spirit in a body (or object). It is here that the fireplace, becomes an allegory, a still life, for the assemblages of our geological landscape – where the narrative of danger, such as
a devasting housefire and the narrative of comfort, such as roaring fire on a romantic evening, is contingent on the materiality of the object, its relationship to space, and our desire for a particular kind of “friction” and “shared warmth”.
Our need to literally fuel our desires has caused uncontrollable wildfires on an ever-warming planet inducing the fire version of an ice age. Fire is at the core of the earth, as the sun is at the centre of the galaxy. The fire of the big bang gave shape to Earth, 4.5 billion years ago. Fire is the source of all things, and therefore connected to our deeper personal and ecological well-being. In a time of consumerism of epic proportions our obsession with possessions leading to a climate crisis, I use objects emerging out of fire to portray existential threats we’ve brought upon ourselves, and to stand in as fragments of, and clues to, a destructive colonial history. Many elders, Fire Keepers and Fire Knowledge holders have the key to this balance, but through hundreds of years of colonial fire suppression and non-indigenous fire management, this knowledge and practice has nearly vanished. We are now in the geological era of the Anthropocene, an era defined by humans’ extensive impact on Earth’s make up.
I hope through my relationship to fire to create a more sustainable and equitable exchange to the human and nonhuman world. I dedicate this show to turn of the 20th century abstract artist and mystic Hilma af Klint and her abstract ways of seeing spirit and matter. May I evoke her prayers and attempt to see as deeply as she did the vibrancy and agency of the biological and geological, the spiritual and material, the human and nonhuman.
Ashes from your wood fire
Are Carried by the wind
And returned to the forest,
Finally
BIO
Lisa Cristinzo (She/her) is a queer painter and installation artist and first generation Canadian settler living in Tkaronto, on Turtle Island, the traditional territory of the many diverse First Nations, Metis, and Inuit peoples. Lisa’s work investigates the by-products of humanity and their mythic significance, through large-scale paintings that traverse natural history, climate hazards, materialism, and magic. She identifies as a Witch and practices earth-based spirituality with a group of people of various genders, identities, ages and abilities guided by a mentor. She has a BFA in drawing and painting from OCADU and is currently an MFA candidate at York University. Since 2007, she has managed several arts programs and community cultural hubs across the city through her work with Toronto Artscape Inc, including Artscape Gibraltar Point, an artist residency and
event space on Toronto Island. She has exhibited locally and internationally since 2004 and currently has a solo exhibition at Likely General called FIRE IS THE SPIRIT OF MATTER for the month of October 2021.