Holocene: Jim Holyoak
York Corridor Vitrines

Jim Holyoak, "Lonely Wanderer, Where Is Your Mother? 2009


As part one of a two-part thesis exhibition, Jim Holyoak be generating a 10’9” tall, 115’ long drawing installation inside the York Corridor vitrine of the FOFA Gallery. Within this long, glass hallway, he will be drawing a geological timescape inhabited by endangered, extinct, and imaginary animals. Thinking of himself as an amateur paleoecologist, and of the FOFA vitrine as a large terrarium, Holyoak will volunteer himself as a semi-captive specimen, and grow a paper forest. This indoor forest will be not only a timescape, but also a mindscape - a realm of fact and fantasy, inhabited by monsters and other animals, extinct and endangered, throughout the span of life on Earth. Like a conscientious gardener, Holyoak will tend to the space every day, for one month.

The aim of this exhibition is to blur the perceived lines between human and animal, real and unreal, what exists now and what is gone forever. By treating myself as a specimen, Holyoak hopes to become more aware of his own animal nature, to examine human alienation from the natural world, and to question the commonly taken-for-granted attitude of human supremacy. He hopes also to increase general mindfulness of the fact that we, as homo sapiens, belong to but a single species among multitudes of Earthlings. From this perspective we can better know who we are as humans.