Planting the Nation: Tree Planting Art and the Endurance of Canadian Nationalism

Abstract

Planting trees under a piece-rate wage scheme is widely recognized in Canada as a veritable national "rite of passage" for young, White, middle-class university students and travelers. Canadian artists Sarah Ann Johnson, Lorraine Gilbert, and Althea Thauberger have received popular and critical acclaim for their artistic representations of the "tree planting experience" in Canada. In this article, the authors critically examine tree planting art-and its reception-and argue that it constitutes the most recent incarnation of art that links nature and nationalism together in the Canadian context. Following Catriona Sandilands incisive reflections on nature and nationalism in Canada, it is argued that the artists in question, and their various commentators, enshrine tree planting as an obligatory passage point through which White middle-class subjects can access both the "pioneering" moments of the nation and the promised greener tomorrow of Canada's future. The connections made by the artists between nature and the nation are by no means innocent, as the authors aim to suggest, but rather, rely on a liberal-individualist account of labor in which the social dynamics of gender, class, and race are erased.

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