How has Canada been inhabited throughout its history?

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That's the story Valentin Astier and Camille Charpigny want to tell with Ghedeist. The project's title is a word coined by Glenn Albrecht to express our new experiences of climate change. The word evokes an awareness of a force that holds all living things together; a sense of deep symbiotic interdependence between oneself and other living things, and their coming together to live together in shared spaces on Earth.

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Today, driven by their interest in the history of these places, Valentin and Camille project their journey by surrounding it with images and words. By cultivating an acute awareness of these vast territories, they create a visual and textual tapestry.

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Through a three-month journey criss-crossing Canada from east to west, a reflection takes shape on the occupation of space, on the way in which humans fit into these disproportionate territories. Each image in this exhibition is a stanza in a visual poem celebrating the raw beauty of Canada, while questioning our relationship with these spaces, between the desire to conquer and the need for humility in the face of immensity.

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This photographic series reminds us that the Canadian territory is a complex space where narratives overlap: that of the aboriginal peoples who have inhabited these lands for millennia, that of successive waves of colonization, that of assimilation, that of its radical transformation with the arrival of the train, then the car, and all these silent witnesses to unfinished human histories.