Student Work: Brindusa Burrows

OCA Creative Arts student Brindusa Burrows is exhibiting (H)Être - a body of worked conceived in dialogue with a 268-year old beech that was felled a year ago in her mountain village in alpine Switzerland.

The following has been extracted from the press release;

When the centuries-old beech tree of Val-d’Illiez had to be felled in autumn 2024, visual artist Brindusa Burrows began a sensitive and poetic journey to recreate and honor the essence of this historic tree. Through engraving, painting, sculpture, and audiovisual media, she shares the profound bond she has woven with this magical being — a connection that transcends matter and resonates across an entire community.

“I was irresistibly drawn to the Tree when I learned it was going to disappear. Over the past year of working on this project, the Tree has taught me about memory, mourning, and continuity in a dimension larger than the human. Working with the Tree naturally became part of my practice. At the heart of my work lies a fascination with how the energy of the natural world — subtle, rhythmic, and often unnameable — can be made visible. Like the rings of a tree quietly recording time, I seek to transmit emotional, geological, and ecological echoes. Cracked surfaces, dense blacks, elemental lines don’t so much represent as they vibrate. My work is not symbolic: it is vibratory.”

The exhibition follows in the lineage of artists for whom nature is not a subject but a co-creator, such as Giuseppe Penone’s dialogues with trees or Agnes Denes’ natural geometries. Using fragments of tree, ink, pastels, charcoal, glue, fibers, and other materials, Burrows constructs an index of traces in a universal language.

“I create this work in a time of polycrisis -  environmental, climatic, social, economic, where images are fast, loud, and literal. I chose instead perception, sensoriality, and slowness. I want the viewer to pause, not to decode but to feel The Tree. To perceive what remains unsayable.”

The exhibition takes place at Chalet de la Treille, Troistorrents, Switzerland between 20 Sept - 12 Oct 2025, Thu-Sun 3-7pm but Brindusa is guiding an online visit on October 1st at 3pm CET. Registration is free at https://hetre.carrd.co. 

You can find out more about Brindusa's work:

www.brindusaburrows.art | www.instagram.com/brindusaf

Congratulations Brindusa and best of luck with everything!