The Terra Systema project transmogrifies the tropical rainforest and the melt of the Greenland ice sheet into respective respiratory and circulatory systems, scaling the planetary to the human body. The work made up of, a set of large scale photographic works and a video installation, uses the roles the arctic and tropical ecosystems play in our imagining and understanding of the planet to connect the singular system of self to the whole of the planet.

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The project began through multi-year research and work at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Station on the Island of Barro Colorado in the Panama Canal. This works that evolved are centered around translating the tropical rainforest belt as a kinetic living, breathing system in line with developing research associated with the forest as a complex interdependent living system. In tandem, in response to a growing concern about the alarming rate of melt of the Greenland ice sheet Seely traveled to Kangerlussuaq Greenland over two summers with a group of scientists from the Institute of Arctic Studies at Dartmouth College. There she began a series of similar works to play out the kinetic life of the ice sheet melt concentrating on the accumulation and movement of water of this mass country of ice. This work follows the path of water starting as glistening drips of melting ice that cumulatively build to an exponential force, one powerful enough to effect the balance of our entire planet by altering the stability of its circulatory system, our network of ocean currents.