Nicole Bauberger stands in front of a swimming school of bike reflectors as part of her 'Fish and Fire' exhibit. Photo Courtesy: Macklen Linke
Whitehorse, YT – Dozens of bike reflectors with clear tape fins swim frozen in the air reflecting shadows on the white walls behind them in a sea resembling a school of bright orange fish.
That is what the scene is like at the ‘Fish and Fire’ exhibit at the Northern Front Studio in downtown Whitehorse.
Yukon artist Nicole Bauberger was first inspired to use bike reflectors after her partner, who owns Cadence Bike Shop, showed her the waste of bicycle parts including bike reflectors.
“A bin full of these beautiful orange reflectors looks like an opulence of goldfish and it’s so evocative and the little reflector bits are very scaly, so it made me think of both fish and fire,” says Bauberger. “I guess that’s the initial inspiration moment.”
The reflector fish had a previous life living at the Dalton Trail Gallery near Bauberger’s home. Her other work appears as a curtain of orange and white reflectors in the shape of flames which was featured at Theatre in the Bush.
Bauberger highlights that the state of climate anxiety lives through the floating plastic with the decision to use wax imitation sinew to hold up the work instead of fishing wire in a bid to make the plastic visible.
“I need to express some of the misanthropy and just general anxiety about our current relationship with the material world as humans,” said Bauberger. “I think positive social change very seldom happens without enlisting our playfulness and imagination, and I hope it does that too.”
If you’re intrigued by this visual spectacle, you’re in luck. The exhibit is open for one more week, concluding with a casual closing party on January 26th. For $30, attendees can take home a piece of the art – their very own reflector fish.
