a reflection of time
& of being
& a reminder of
our past, present and future 

tree of life was commissioned for BMO Finanical Group for the BMO Project Room, curated by Dawn Cain. The installation embodies the human life cycle from birth to death, and centers on concepts of growth, maturity, faith, community, and legacy. Although I am addressing the human experience, I feel that these concepts are equally applicable to institutions. 

The idea, and the title of the work, owes a debt to the emotionally affecting Terrence Malick 2011 film, “The Tree of Life.” Reception of this film was polarized – many people found it overly self-indulgent and preachy. Although I wasn’t won over by the film, it still grows in my mind in the form of a poem. What resonated with me was how: the film moved fluidly between the micro and the macro; the narrative structure collapsed and rebuilt; it spoke about memory, loss and imagination; it engaged with interior and exterior worlds in non-linear ways; it emotionally and cerebrally took on abstraction and representation; and it unrelentingly turned the lens on life and death. 

These affinities, correlations and impressions present themselves in textual form in the ephemeral installation that I am proposing. As in the film The Tree of Life, this installation centers on “being.” 

The 5 source words following the left to right sequence are: 

beginning 
becoming
believing
belonging
bequeathing 

In all of the 5 panels the source word, which is the first word at the top of the panel, has been deconstructed to find all other words embedded in the word (see detail example below). The process works left to right, exhausting the words in each letter before moving on to the next. For instance, after all words beginning in b are excavated, then all words beginning with e are addressed and so on. Words are allowed to repeat. 

www.tree-of-life.ca

essay by Rui Amaral - www. tree-of-life.ca/about.html

reviews:
Cycling the Life of Language. Border Crossings, Issue 149, March 2019. bordercrossingsmag.com 
Lois Andison at BMO Project Room ?by Christiana Myers, Canadian Art, January 24, 2019. canadianart.ca – reviews