New Mineral Collective: The Pleasure Report
New Mineral Collective (NMC) is a collaborative art initiative by Tanya Busse and Emilija Škarnulytė, based in Ontario. This exhibition celebrates the artists’ tenth year of collective practice. Held at Mercer Union, this installation is a mixed media work that includes soothing narration, pink light and surrounding sounds blended with field recordings, printed textile and sculptural elements. We enter a reflective state in which we ask the question, how much has the mining industry of Canada continuously ground down these sacred lands, and for how long do we have to wait until there is no land to excavate, let alone to preserve? NMC challenges destructive mining practices through poetic activism, pushing visitors to see those behaviours through a fresh perspective on the scars of extraction and loss.
New Mineral Collective, The Pleasure Report, 2025. Installation view: Mercer Union. Courtesy the artists. Photo: Vuk Dragojevic.
NMC demonstrates a method called “counter prospecting,” an innovative act of claiming mineral rights to prevent mining. They call this new form “speculative fiction,” inspired from the term “geopoetics” by Scottish poet Kenneth White. Placing molds of unusual shapes of dried sand and hanging textiles of printed marble-like terrains, the work addresses past experiences of excavation disasters and encourages us to question the impact of mining. With the help of a guiding narrative voice and the combination of meditative sound filling the space (collaborated with artist Tuomas A. Laitinen), we are tuned in with these scars or “geotraumas” in a gentle, yet powerful way. This work is a form of activism, focusing on prevention by saving the land from excavation.
New Mineral Collective, The Pleasure Report, 2025. Installation view: Mercer Union. Courtesy the artists. Photo: Vuk Dragojevic
The exhibition also includes the collective’s recent publication, The Pleasure Report which summarizes NMC’s work over the past decade. It demonstrates the artists’ practices, skills and dedication through photographic images of landscapes, both physical and metaphorical, as resistance, but also the pleasure and memory of these spaces.
New Mineral Collective, The Pleasure Report, 2025. Installation view: Mercer Union. Courtesy the artists. Photo: Vuk Dragojevic
Polyna Alexseev
*Exhibition information: New Mineral Collective, The Pleasure Report, January 25 – March 22, 2025, Mercer Union, 1286 Bloor Street West, Toronto. Gallery hours: Tuesday- Saturday, 11am – 6 pm.