NATASHA FAYE JENSEN
SMOKE THAT THUNDERS
16 JANUARY 2027 - 27 MARCH 2027
Off-Site | Lethbridge Trade & Convention Centre (101 Exhibition Wy S, Lethbridge, AB)

Smoke That Thunders presents a series of collages by artist Natasha Faye Jensen of native and invasive plants of the prairies. Jensen disrupts images of these plants to consider the tension between how nature is represented in comparison to the ecological realities of today.

Jensen sources her imagery from Canadian garden, travel, and outdoor magazines from the 1970s. These glossy depictions of Canada’s outdoors often perpetuated myths of an “untouched”, unending, and pristine wilderness lying in wait to be developed. Jensen disrupts these manufactured depictions of the landscape to consider how ecosystems continue to be shaped through resource extraction, land management practices, and invasive species.

Using methods of tearing, scratching, and re-assembling the paper material of each image, Jensen makes upheaval in the landscape visual and tactile. In a collage depicting the invasive and noxious Viper's bugloss, dozens of torn holes interrupt the surface of the photo, revealing an obscured and scratched image of the parasitic Ghost plant (Monotropa uniflora) beneath. Below the surface of representations of Canada’s natural landscape, there exists a real geography with its own cuts, ruptures, and mendings.

Curated by: Adam Whitford, Curator & Exhibitions Manager
Lead Preparator: Arianna Richardson

Natasha Faye Jensen is a dual Canadian and United Kingdom interdisciplinary artist from Moh’kins’tsis (Calgary), located in Treaty 7 territory in Southern Alberta, Canada. Working across sculpture, collage, photography, and film, her research-driven practice examines the intersections of ecology, materiality, and colonial history, with a particular focus on cultivated landscapes as contested sites of power.

She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Alberta University of the Arts in 2013 and completed a Master of Arts in Contemporary Art Practice at the Edinburgh College of Art in 2020. Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions, screenings, and festivals across Canada, the United States, Finland, and the United Kingdom.

Jensen’s practice has been supported through grants from Calgary Arts Development, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and Creative Scotland. She is the recipient of several awards, including the RSA Barns-Graham Travel Award (2020), the RBC Emerging Artist Award from the Mayor’s Lunch for Arts Champion and Visual Artist and Craft Maker Award from Creative Scotland. 

Natasha Faye Jensen: Smoke That Thunders is made possible through a partnership with Excite Lethbridge and the Southern Alberta Art Gallery Maansiksikaitsitapiitsinikssin.

Funding for this exhibition is generously supported by the Rozsa Foundation's Audience Development Funding Program. 

The Southern Alberta Art Gallery Maansiksikaitsitapiitsinikssin acknowledges the support of the City of Lethbridge, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

The artist would also like to thank Calgary Arts Development for their support.