Masumi Rodriguez and Elena Kirby are an artist-duo based in Montréal and Toronto. Their shared practice, TMDFM, centering “invasive” plant species as fibre material, has 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.
Our collaboration is to build a shared language and familiarity with our materials and to form work from what’s already here. We experiment with forms of production that involve community integration, questions about settler relationships to land, and the public engagement of land stewardship within urban greenspaces. This practice revolves around harvesting and processing fibre from dog strangling-vine (DSV), and connecting these methods to question: how can our artistic practice be integrated within active networks of environmental labor?
Together, we consider the language (narratives), labour, and land-management practices tied to these plants and their broader relationships with governing bodies and industrial disturbance.
With the topic of “invasive species” that spans many fields of study, we have learned from and collaborated 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.