A personal perspective on mining
Labrador City artist grapples with impact of resource extraction through art practice
Tanea Hynes’ life is deeply intertwined with the iron ore mine in her hometown of Labrador City. Growing up, the mine put food on her family’s table and shoes on her feet. As she got older and began post-secondary studies at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, Hynes started driving a massive 300-tonne haul truck at the mine. She did this for four summers to help pay for school. The 23-year-old feels conflicted about the site. Hynes has been taking photos — digitally and on film — since she was about 12 and majored in photography at art school. “I was taking these fantasy photos and then I went to art school, and I was lost with what I wanted to say with my art or make art about,” she told The Telegram a few days before finishing up a month-long residency at Eastern Edge Art Gallery in St. John’s. “I ended up working at the mine my second summer in art school, and it just started to creep into my head — maybe this is what I should start talking about and telling people about?” Exploring her feelings about the mine’s environmental and societal impact from a socialist perspective, Hynes has developed an ongoing art project titled “Workhorse.” Hynes did not have a true sense of the mine’s size or scale prior to working there. Introduced to Marxist theory through art school, she started to think critically about a culture built solely around industry, which Hynes consider to be the case in Labrador City. “The mine is the only reason the town exists,” she said. “What happens when everyone’s lives are so consumed by this one job and this mass system of resource extraction? Just the culture that surrounds it and the experience itself is you’re very much a cog in the machine when you’re working this kind of job.”
“The mine is the only reason the town exists.” Tanea Hynes
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
Through “Workhorse,” Hynes delves into personal dealings with isolation, desperation, depression, extreme cold, escapism, industry, capitalism, labour and the destruction of the land for profit. Most recently, Hynes has worked with topographic maps of mining sites, recreating them on wooden panels using actual iron ore concentrate — it creates a sort of glittery effect as a material. These specific sites represent the newest mining pits, and the artist has a history with the land. “It’s an area very close to town where I grew up, just picking berries and exploring, hiking, driving around and getting cars stuck on trails,” she said. “All of a sudden, we’re mining it. It’s the first time I’ve seen the before and after. I’d actually experienced the land in its natural state, and then all of a sudden, I’m just there in this truck helping to rip it up and destroy the land. It’s pretty emotional.” Another new approach to her subject comes via 3-D renderings of mine pits, removed from reality through the addition of bright colours. “The pits are so barren. There’s nothing really natural in the pit, except for just the rock. There’s no life happening. I was really thinking about what if it was just a dream and different — vibrant and just the opposite of what it is.” Hynes intends to eventually compile all aspects of “Workhorse” into an art exhibition and book. She feels fortunate to be able to channel her artistic energy into a subject of personal importance that also has not been explored in this way. “It feels very rewarding, because it’s just a chance to grasp where I come from and this experience that so many people around me have in Labrador City,” she said. “If I go to any city, no one else has really had this experience, so just to be able to explore it and figure out what it means and just try to show it to other people, which has been a challenge, because it’s so big. It’s my entire life I’m almost trying to put into pictures and into art.”