Liza Faktor

Artist Statement

After Us is an ongoing visual art project that addresses the traumas and resilience of Pacific Northwest landscape-in particular, of the forest ecosystems-in the context of climate crisis and healing. It’s a documentary fiction that depicts the landscape with remnants of our intervention and imagines a future-scape where all the traces of human species are erased. Informed by climate science and traditional ecological knowledge, the project is a thought experiment on what we will leave behind as the reality of climate crisis is staring us in the face. 

What and where is wilderness? Can the Earth heal and regenerate itself, as in the aftermaths of the previous major extinction events? What will the landscape of the future say about us or our attempts to tame it? Focusing on the ramifications of the natural and human disturbances in the PNW environment, the work responds to the challenges that forest ecosystems face. It explores biodiversity, our unity with other species, the uniqueness of ancient forests, forests regeneration and management. The forests are slowing down overheating of the planet, and in the end, postponing our extinction. 

The project has emerged from my crisis of relation to the new landscape and feeling of uprootedness. This inquiry into the PNW ecosystems, land use and placemaking has been a vital part of my healing-from the illness, migration and generational traumas-and gave me an opportunity to find my place and my role in this landscape. Our disconnect from community and lack of belonging has been further magnified by pandemic, political upheaval and climate crisis. I believe solving this crisis of relation to the land and the ecosystem health are intertwined. 

This series, started in October 2021, is ongoing.

Liza Faktor | Portland, OR

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