Earth Shrine, a fully immersive experiential installation work by Toronto based artist Camille Jodoin-Eng will be opening at Patel Gallery January 9th 2020. Lifting off from prominent themes in previous works of repetition and symbology, Earth Shrine is one of the largest installations Jodoin-Eng has created to date. Designed as a kind of psycho-spiritual portal, akin to a temple or garden, Earth Shrine asks participants to quietly pause within the installation, drawing focus toward the central sculpture of an ascending staircase at the base of a shrine. What can we individually aspire to be? Metaphorically? Physically? The mirror and it’s reflections become plodded earth to sew our potentiality anew. Comprised of mostly forraged materials that have come into contact with the artists every day life; plastics, rubble, wire, newspaper and acrylics are gilded in silver, gold and copper reflecting back to the participants a duplicate world of possibility. In spite of themselves, visitors within the space participate in the ongoing creation of the installation. Within the portable temple all icons and deities are removed. We the visitor are met with the present, our past and a shrine comprised of mostly trash.

Text by Dusty Lee Norsworthy