Elise Popa
A Fallow Year

A Fallow Year tells the story of Popa’s own fallow season, encapsulated through an intuitive skating practice and the building of an ice rink on a farm just outside Stratford, Ontario. The documentation that follows the process of making the rink explores how the physical labour and repetitive maintenance tasks mirror the efforts needed to support the artist’s recovery and self-determination post heartbreak. The performance-for-camera works, in which a first-person body-mounted camera is worn, explores drawing and intuitive movement as a form of embodied agency. Through using the analogy of an agricultural fallow season, the exhibition portrays a regenerative year of self-healing and renewal after loss.