VICTORIA, BC — Step into a world of shadow and light with Uprooted a new immersive installation by artist Jaimie Robson, opening June 28 in the Climate Change Gallery at the Royal BC Museum and running until October 2, 2025. This installation explores the emotional and ecological impact of wildfires and climate change on BC’s ancestral forests.
“I’m excited for this opportunity to provide visitors with a hands-on, imaginative and magical experience in the gallery,” says Kim Gough, Learning Program Developer at the Royal BC Museum.
Using intricate paper cutouts, suspended houses and projected light, Uprooted transforms the gallery into an interactive space that invites reflection on themes of home, loss and resilience. The central piece—more than 100 delicate paper houses floating in a shadowy canopy—evokes both the fragility of shelter and the strength of memory. Visitors use handheld flashlights to magnify miniature details into immersive wall-sized projections.
“The project builds on personal reflections on ideas of home and belonging and questions the complexities of our relationships with the land we live on,” says artist Jaimie Robson, who was born and raised in Victoria, and now living and working in Montreal. “It began on the forest floor, bringing a microscopic lens to the ground beneath our feet. This perspective opens a path to explore climate anxiety, uncertainty and solastalgia—the distress and grief one feels when their home environment is altered beyond their control.”
Uprooted is part of a larger effort to reimagine the Climate Change Gallery, with content that will continue to evolve and be updated in the years ahead.
Join Jaimie Robson for a hands-on paper art workshop on June 28, 10 a.m.–12 p.m. Participants (ages 16+) will create forest-inspired cutouts and explore shadow-play techniques featured in the exhibition.
This installation is made possible in part through funding received by the artist from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Quebec.
About the Royal BC Museum: The Royal BC Museum explores the province’s human history and natural history, advances new knowledge and understanding of BC, and provides a dynamic forum for discussion and a place for reflection. The museum and archives celebrate culture and history, telling the stories of BC in ways that enlighten, stimulate and inspire. Located in Victoria on the territory of the lək̓ʷəŋən (Lekwungen) peoples, known today as the Songhees and Xwsepsum (Esquimalt) Nations, we are a hub of community connections in BC—on-site, off-site and online—taking pride in our collective histories.
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Artist bio: Jaimie Robson is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in cut paper/shadow as well as in ceramics. In 2012 she co-founded Atelier Make, a ceramics studio in Montreal, along with the artist collective Mere Phantoms. She completed a BFA at Emily Carr University (2002) and an MA (Media Studies) at Concordia University (2012). She has exhibited in Canada and internationally including the Istanbul Biennial (2013), Brandts Museum (Denmark, 2015), Grunt Gallery (2017), and Surrey Art Gallery (2023). Jaimie has led numerous neighbourhood-based public art projects and seeks to bring participatory elements into her practice. This is her first solo exhibition, and the work is an extension of the practice she developed with Mere Phantoms over the past twelve years.
Jaimie Robson
Artist
jaimie_robson@yahoo.com
