Fire Talks
Fire Talks
Donna Cooper
September 2024
My art process addresses memory, history, place and the body. Collaborating with the landscape through site specific interventions is an integral part of my practice. The essence of any space or place is installed within its past. Researching the history of the land along with the flora and fauna of the area are critical steps in my process of accessing its story. Like our bodies, the land contains memories and even trauma, but it can also heal. Architect Leslie Kanes Weisman stated that we need to, “reshape the territorial definition of our patriarchal world, along with the social identities and injustices that those boundaries have defined for all of us.” An awareness that I often meditate on and put into action through my photographed interventions and with my fire paintings.
Fire Talks, my most current work, utilizes the element of fire as I learn to reindiginize myself and work towards being a good steward of the land I call River Place. The local Roanoke River continuously brings organic matter in all shapes and sizes towards my house. I often interpret this as an offering, as a collaboration, to shift & transform, to generate bon fires much like those in Nordic and Celtic traditions celebrating the midsummers eve or Native American traditions that utilize fires to balance and maintain the local ecosystem.
Fire Talks consists of photographs of my ritualistic performances where my body is often ghosted as I work with time and fire. The project also consists of paintings where I converse with fire through mark making. Burns, smoke, charcoal, and sometimes dirt make their way onto the paper as fire and I work to converse with each other. In collaborating I work to become egoless, so that the land has agency once again. I am rewriting the story handed to me at birth and facilitating a healing shift through the process of making the Fire Talks project.