Jessica Auer‘s rich, highly detailed C-prints transport you to the edge of the sea. In her series of works titled Unmarked Sites currently on show at Les Territoires, she explores ancient cultural sites and settlements in Newfoundland and Labrador. Like an archeologist, but with a camera instead of a pick-axe, Auer tracks down isolated villages, remnants of pre-historic structures, burial mounds, sod huts, fjords. Some of these remnants of civilization are barely visible, and you may have missed them had the artist not captured them on film.

What is evident, however, is how both time and human activity have subtly changed the landscape, each on their own time scale. The majestic, rugged landscape is dotted with tiny homes and a spider-web of foot-paths. Erosion and the sea wear away at the massive boulders. Auer’s work examines both how change is caused by humans as well as the efforts to preserve the region’s cultural identity.

The series Unmarked Sites has also been published as an artist’s book which is now available at Les Territoires. The artist will give an artist’s talk on Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 5:00 p.m.

Les Territoires, space 527
Jessica Auer
Unmarked Sites
April 29 – May 14, 2011
www.lesterritoires.org