I am a visual artist based in Montréal/Tiohtià:ke, the unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory known as Québec, Canada. I have taught at Concordia University since 2006.
I have been making art and writing about women, animals, and natural and urban landscapes for over 30 years. I am particularly interested in landscapes designed, cultivated, or preserved by women. In addition to painting and drawing, I have produced collaborative and community-based art projects, often linked to gardens and urban landscapes. My work has been exhibited in Canada, England, the US, Australia, and France, where I had my first major European solo exhibition at the La Napoule Art Foundation, Château de la Napoule, in 2026.
I am indebted to scholar and artist Jane Rendell for the term “critical spatial practice” for my understanding of how artists need to engage with space not as a passive vessel but as a vital nonhuman collaborator who will shape the resulting work. More-than-human actors are increasingly important to my practice, whether these are animals, insects, birds, waterways, winds, the night sky, or earthly topographies. Plants are especially resonant, given my work with gardens. For Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer, plants are our elders and teachers, our kin. She writes, “humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn – we must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance. Their wisdom is apparent in the way that they live … They’ve been on the earth far longer than we have …” (Braiding Sweetgrass, 2013).
Contact: cynthia.i.hammond@gmail.com