Forest

Schulnik is one of the most promising artists of her generation. Trained mainly in experimental animation techniques, she worked in a variety of animation studies until 2007, when she began devoting herself fully to art-making.


Forest is the artist’s fifth stop-motion animated video. Commissioned by the indie rock group Grizzly Bear, the work is the official video for their song “Ready, Able.”


Long Hair Hobo, one of the artist’s favourite characters, springs to life in brightly coloured and joyous clay (an enchanted palette in a savage world), his limbs and clothing beating to the rhythm of the music. He comes face to face with his alter ego, who is transformed, melts and changes into a rainbow before morphing into a lake. Long Hair Hobo is wonderstruck at the sight of this magnificent visual feast intercut with images of fields and greenspace, in what is a masterful integration of the real and virtual.


An eloquent testimony to the impossibility of an unchanging identity, this work reveals the uncertainty and instability that accompany human beings throughout their lives.