The Heart is an Organ of Fire

This body of work addresses the demise of nature, particularly by way of fire. Coco’s lifelong appreciation of nature began at age 7 when she attended a summer day camp and learned to build a one-match fire for the first time. Overnight camp in the woods of northern Ontario initiated her love for cooking over a campfire and sleeping outside; canoe trips into the depths of the wilderness were the highlight of her childhood. 

She read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, a foundational work of environmentalism, in high school. By the early ‘90s she was an environmental activist, steering one of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society’s ships in the Caribbean. She was not alone back then in her knowledge that humans weren’t going to save the earth, but it was nonetheless important to do whatever could be done. However, she never imagined that what we now know as climate change would happen so soon, so fast.

The Heart is an Organ of Fire spans over ten years of work, envisioning both the precarious potential for and the horrific aftermath of fire, all of which find various formats within the context of the show.