In the summer of 2023, a friend travelling home to Newfoundland to experience the Bonavista Biennale sent a photo of her in the arms of a sea monster, the happiest looking sea monster you’ve ever seen. If you have ever seen a sea monster.
The underwater being emerged not from the ocean but the imagination of Newfoundland artist Anastasia Tiller, one of 23 artists featured in the bienniel, month-long, and multi-site art exhibition on the Bonavista Peninsula.
The theme for 2023 was “host,” a word that is part of the DNA of people living in our easternmost province. Artists could interpret their own meaning of “host” as the community welcomed the world to their inspired playground.
Tiller, originally from Ontario but living on the island for more than two decades, immersed herself in the ideas of how humans relate to land and sea, our connections and responsibilities to nature, and how we ultimately find joy in the affinity for two worlds that are really one.
“The Biennale created this incredible opportunity for me to create an entire world,” explains Tiller, who titled her exhibition Symbiosis, a collection of hooked pieces representing real and mythical sea creatures.
The theme of “host” sent Biennale curators Rose Bouthillier and Ryan Rice on a mission to assemble a collective of artists who could speak to the idea in an expansive way.
“One of the important aspects of the theme was hospitality — what it means to be a good host and guest,” explains Bouthillier, who will continue to partner with Rice to curate the 2025 public art festival.
“Anastasia’s installation really embodied that. It’s an invitation to play, to enter this colourful world, but also asks visitors to be respectful and considerate of the environment they are in. Ryan and I were also thinking about inter-species interaction and interdependence,” Bouthillier continues. “Anastasia’s installation was called Symbiosis, two species living in close relation. To me, it spoke a lot to the importance of consideration, respect and love for all forms of life,” she adds.
Tiller created more than 20 pieces of varying sizes and shapes that invited the audience to interact and play with the textural objects. She made her first rug over a decade after a visit to Fogo Island, taking inspiration from the traditional art. She professes to challenge herself and push her limits with form, colour, and in her connections to humans and nature.
“I come from a place of positivity. I wanted to give the audience hug,” says Tiller.
A signature element of the exhibit was a sea monster hugging station. Roughly the size of an adult human, Tiller gave form to her fanciful ocean friend with long arms that invited everyone for a warm embrace. Another sea monster was suspended from the ceiling in a sea of other floating fish, allowing visitors to wrap their arms around the colourful, cushy creature and give a hug back.
“It was so fun to see people play with the pieces. It just made everyone so happy,” says Tiller, thinking back to her own experience a year ago and a time not that long ago, during the height of the COVID epidemic, when hugs were considered taboo.
“When you see art in museums and galleries, people are often just observers, you cannot touch. I wanted to break that barrier of limitation to allow people to touch the artwork and cross that limitation. This work is all about nature, so at the same time we are showing that human beings are participants in the ecosystem, not rulers of nature,” she says.
Beinnale co-curator Rose Bouthillier believes that being able to touch and interact with art makes a big impression on people breaking them out of their passive viewer mode.
“People were delighted with her exhibit. Getting a hug from the sea monster turned into a group activity. The arms were really long,” says Bouthillier.
The Bonavista Biennale gives contemporary artists like Anastasia Tiller a platform to respond to the dynamics of a changing world. The landscape of Bonavista is the ideal backdrop as a community that is moving through an era of adaptation, resisting old narratives, and creating a vision for what is possible when you look at your resources in a different way.
Tiller believes that contemporary art creates a pathway for artists to move away from human-centric art, where the art is all about the human experience, and allow something else to take place.
“You can’t get away from the fact that we are still humans observing the art, but there is a symbiosis and a sense of belonging that can be created,” she says.
While breaking down barriers to experience art, Tiller’s participation in the Biennale also opened new opportunities for her own work as she continues to catch the attention of galleries.
Tiller says that she got noticed by being persistent, but being invited to the Biennale has been life-changing.
“I did not take the invitation lightly. This is a very important event in Canadian art. It is collaborative and inclusive. I learned a lot about Indigenous contemporary art. I knew some of the names but to meet them, interact with them and learn their approach to art was transformational for me,” says Tiller.
The multidisciplinary artist thinks of herself as a painter first, but her work in textiles makes her an artist to watch. She has started preliminary sketches for a series of landscape paintings and looks forward to putting down her rug hook for a little while and picking up a paint brush.
But the long-term effect of the sea monster hug has been contagious. She is currently packing up the pieces of Symbiosis and taking it to Ontario. Visitors at the Elora Arts Centre near Guelph will experience the playful embrace of Tiller’s sensory sculptures. She had to make a sea monster twin for the Ontario show. The original is still giving hugs near the waters that inspired its creation. Tiller’s sea monster hugging station caused such a stir of emotions that The Rooms gallery, in St. John’s, N.L., bought it.
You can now get a sea monster hug any day of the week.