Ashley Beerdat: Becoming the Poem

Becoming the Poem is an installation of landscape paintings that consider my relationship to nature and how to foster hope living in an ecological crisis. As a first-generation diasporic artist of Guyanese descent, I engage with speculative imagination, by exploring the flora and fauna of the region that my parents are from in West Coast Demerara near the Amazon rainforest, along with my present geographic location. Through material driven processes, I embed myself in highly intuitive, sensory-based working methodologies that mimic the evolutionary path of nature. The outcome, an accumulation of deep time materialized through my body and the paint, collapses past and future representations of natural formations, presenting nature’s resilience and how it can rise above ecological disaster.

Artist Biography

Ashley Beerdat is a painter, muralist and arts educator based in the GTA. She has a BA in Studio Art and Art History from Western University and is currently completing her Master of Fine Arts at the University of Waterloo. Her work is held in the City of Mississauga’s permanent corporate art collection and has been exhibited at the Small Arms Inspection Building, Latitude 53, the Artist Project, and Withrow Common Gallery.

Location Information
Location Address: ECH - East Campus Hall
200 University Ave West
Room 1239
Waterloo, ON, CA  N2L 3G1
Location coordinates:
Additional Information
Host: University of Waterloo Art Gallery Event website: Becoming the Poem