2023 Winner — Bianca Shonoee Arroyo-Kreimes

Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes (aka Shonee) is a Montreal-based Costa Rican-Canadian digital media artist. Her creative practice as her work strives to resurrect the meaning of nature’s place in her own life now as both an urbanite and multidisciplinary artist. Within the virtual worlds she creates, 3D embodiments of organisms borrow shapes, colours, and stories from plants and animals within our own world, while remaining singular. This conscious decision is intended to inspire a newly discovered appreciation of the endangered, non-human world that humanity often takes for granted as her portrayals seek to embody humankind’s seemingly objective and narrow misunderstanding of nature in this time of ecological crisis. 

Exploring topics of extinction and the commodification of nature, Last Species On Earth is a multi-channel video installation which weaves together a speculative reality where the last surviving specimens of plant and animal origin are kept in incubation chambers, situating viewers as zoo attendees. Last Species On Earth fragments the evolution of plants and animals as we know them today, following what natural selection would look like if nature were to adapt in total agreement with humanity's desire to domesticate it. 

To learn more about the artistic practice of Bianca Shonoee Arroyo-Kreimes: https://shonee.space/