Nina-Marie Lister (MCIP, RPP Hon. ASLA) is an ecologist and landscape designer. Her work, whether in research, writing, art, or design, is driven by her desire to connect people to nature. Focusing on the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss, she fosters this connection materially and metaphorically, via infrastructure, activism and reflection. Her installations explore the dynamic and reciprocal processes of extraction, accretion, erosion and decay. Constructed from found objects of natural and manufactured materials, her works have their origins in the earth, and they are in the process of returning to it: through mechanical weathering by wind, waves and water; chemical weathering through sunlight, corrosion, rusting and oxidizing: and organic decomposition. These processes are interrupted, accelerated and often exacerbated by human intervention. Each material presented, whether wood, stone, bone, linen, shell, rope or metal, is in the process of transformation, decay and return to the earth. Lister sees her works as both meditations on, and mediations of human agency contrasted in time and scale against the eternal and primordial processes of nature. 

Lister’s works are created on the traditional territory of the Huron-Wendat, Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee peoples, on the shores of Lake Ontario in Prince Edward County. All profits from the sale of her works will be returned to these lands and waters, to support their cultural and natural heritage protection by the Friends of South Shore.