Matka Las (“Mother Woods”) is a brambled journey towards cultural reclamation, through the thickets of folklore, history, and fractured remnants of a mother tongue. As a trans child born to Polish immigrants, the artist grew up untethered, neither Polish, nor wholly Canadian, unable to reconcile joyous memories of Polish traditions with a country that considers his existence illegal. But once upon a time, Poland was pagan, ruled by anthropomorphic deities for whom gender may be fluid, unknown or irrelevant. In a series of wood carvings on pine slabs, Luca Jesse Apel reinterprets the mythic creatures of his childhood through a trans and queer lens, giving flesh to beings long without form, and reconnecting with a mother that may actually call him son.