Masumi Rodriguez and Elena Kirby are an artist-duo with a shared practice centering “invasive” plant species as fibre material. They have exhibited at the plumb (Toronto), 24hr Lotto (Toronto), Studio 44 (Vancouver), and Paper Museum (Ino, Japan). They began a workshop series, PAPER LABS, papermaking from site-specific “invasive” plants with local stewardship groups in Toronto, Montréal, and Vancouver. They’ve attended residencies in Japan, Cambodia, Mexico, and Toronto. The duo has given talks at Concordia University, UQAM, Université de l'Ontario Français, Environmental studies association of Canada and with the Invasive species council of Metro Vancouver.




With the topic of “invasive species” that spans across many fields of study, we learn and collaborate with land stewardship groups, ecologists, land-workers, human geographers, and artists to be in conversation about the nuances that are prevalent in the relations we hold with these characterized plants. Within our work, we look into individual, collective and institutional motivations, priorities, and approaches of removing these plants to understand our human relationship to “invasive species” and to consider the labor that goes into stewardship and care of land.

As we navigate the process of creating material gleaning from urban spaces, it allows us to contemplate the language of “invasivity” in connection with humans and plant species. Since papermaking is a long and laborious process, we’ve built a curiosity for forming intricate relationships through material making.

We hold a desire to place ourselves within long-spanning memories of what goes into the objects that we hold, and that hold us. As a starting place, paper is formed through breaking down initial bonds in plant fibres which are reformed into new bonds in paper. Within this transition are the many stems and the many hands both repeating motions, until in the final material, one motion is not decipherable from the next, we feel the manifold surfaces of the present object, what went in, and what emerged.