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Nahanni McKay’s ‘The Beekeeper’ Documents Doctor’s Buzzworthy Hobby

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Image courtesy Revelstoke Visual Arts Centre.
From The Beekeeper, by Nahanni McKay.
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By Perrin Grauer

Posted on June 24, 2021

‘The best thing we can do for the bees is to understand science and the connections between us and the natural world,’ says the artist and ECU alum.

A solo exhibition of photographs by Banff-based artist Nahanni McKay (BFA 2017) is currently on view at the Revelstoke Visual Arts Centre, in Revelstoke, BC.

Called The Beekeeper, the show features Nahanni’s documentary photos of Dr. Mark Nigro — a surgeon at Vancouver General Hospital — in his part-time guise as a beekeeper.

“I wanted to highlight Dr. Nigro’s hobby of beekeeping in this series because he is making a positive contribution to the declining bee population in his spare time,” Nahanni writes in her exhibition text. Bees are “crucial to the future,” she adds, and yet they are vanishing “at alarming rate” because of pollution, climate change, habitat destruction, and pesticide use.

Bees play a central role in pollinating global food crops, Nahanni writes. Without them, the world’s food supply is at risk. In this sense, she suggests, Dr. Nigro’s beekeeping supports public health — his hobby mirroring the humanness of his work as a surgeon.

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Image courtesy Revelstoke Visual Arts Centre.

From The Beekeeper, by Nahanni McKay.

Nahanni recounts a conversation she had with Dr. Nigro, who explained the way science reveals the interconnectedness of every landscape, every system, and every living being.

“Science is in everything we do,” Nahanni writes. “For example, when going fishing, you have to know where the fish live. When ski touring, you have to understand snow, weather and hiking, taking in the environment around you.”

In this same way, beekeeping requires developing an “understanding the relationship between plants and animals,” she continues.

“The best thing we can do for the bees is to understand science and the connections between us and the natural world.”

You can view Nahanni’s The Beekeeper at the Revelstoke Visual Arts Centre through June 25. Take a virtual tour of all the exhibitions currently showing at the centre now, online.