Liz Zetlin: More Than Human – a year in my garden

April 25, 2026 - June 27, 2026

Liz Zetlin, video still of “Spring, Cecropia Moth on Alternate Leaf Dogwood/Moozominzh” from More Than Human: a year in my garden, 2026.

Liz Zetlin’s More Than Human unfolds as an immersive four-channel video installation, filmed over the course of a year in her local garden. Each projection corresponds to a season, unfolding chronologically as shifting light and colour trace the passage of time, from frost giving way to thaw, to blossoms opening into dense summer abundance, and autumn’s gradual return to stillness. Within these projections, the garden becomes a dynamic, entangled ecosystem—native and non-native species interwoven in dense, living textures, animals and insects flickering through the frame, and a layered soundscape blending composed rhythms with ambient local sounds.

The exhibition is grounded in the concept of the “more-than-human,” a term articulated by philosopher David Abram to describe the vast, animate world that exceeds human perception yet sustains it. Rather than positioning humans as separate from or dominant over nature, Abram emphasizes our embeddedness within a living, interdependent field of plants, animals, and ecological forces. In Zetlin’s work, this perspective is made palpable: plants communicate through electrical impulses translated into sound, pollinators move with agency and purpose, and the garden itself emerges as a network of relations rather than a passive backdrop. The scale of the projections further destabilizes human-centered perception, rendering a moth monumental and a leaf expansive, and asking viewers to encounter them not as minor details but as vital presences within a shared world.

About the Artist: Liz Zetlin is an environmental artist whose work includes poetry, photography, video, installation, and site-specific nature-based collaborations to investigate our inter-relationships with each other, the land, and the more than human. She is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Owen Sound, and her latest poetry collection is Prompted by Happiness. She has created over 30 short videos and the feature documentary Resilience: Transforming Our Community, which became a catalyst for climate action in Grey/Bruce. Liz is co-founder and former artistic director of the Words Aloud Spoken Word Festival and director of the Words Aloud documentary. Liz was Owen Sound’s first Outstanding Individual in the Arts (2013) and received the 2024 Lifetime Achievement in the Arts award. Her art now focuses on the regeneration of our land to support pollinators and the native plants they rely on. She leads the grassroots group, Pollinate Owen Sound.  

Opening Reception: Saturday April 25, 2026 from 1:00pm to 3:00pm

Artist Talk: Saturday May 9, 2026 from 11:00am to 12:00pm