"When is Future, When is Now?" @ Gallery 101
Curated by Wolf Babe Collective
Presented at Gallery 101 by the Asinabka Festival, in partnership with the Indigenous Curatorial Collective (ICCA)
A group exhibition of select works from the Indigenous Art Collection at Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada.
This immersive exhibition recalls the intimate, familiar and delightful shared spaces of movie-watching. From a lovingly reimagined local video store of Indigenous film to the warmth and comfort of our aunties' living rooms, When is Future? When is Now? conjures up sovereign spaces of relationality and joy that exist in multiple temporalities. Selected from the Indigenous Art Collection at Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, the works in this exhibition soften the contours of time and memory, and center rhythmic, non-linear narratives that cosmologically envision and celebrate a rounder world.
List of works
- Krista Belle Stewart, “Potato Gardens”
- Tanya Lukin Linklater, “Slay All Day”
- Theo Cuthand, “Reclamation”
- Melissa General, “Reclamation”
- Aylan Couchie, commissioned installation
Image credit: Melissa General, Reclamation (2014)
About - Wolf Babe Collective
Wolf Babe (Joi T. Arcand, Alexandra Kahsenni:io Nahwegahbow, Danielle Printup and Tanis Worme) is a collective of First Nations women and non-binary artists and curators, who recognize and work through the constellation of shared connections to the region we currently call home - at the confluence of Kichi-Sìbì (Ottawa River) and Pasapkedjinawong (Rideau River) - and our respective ancestral lands. We each carry knowledge arising out of our individual practices, our bonds to our First Nations communities, and the intergenerational ties long forged between our families. We draw from our lived experiences; our shared values and complementary worldviews ground us and inform the direction of our work.
Our collective centers notions of reciprocity, relationship and community, and gestures towards the subtle, the soft, the tender and quiet and discerns the extraordinary in the everyday. We are interested in the permeability between worlds, realms and multiple temporalities and the textured relations between persons and the animate landscape. Our practice is informed by dialogical processes and methodologies of visiting, and centers conversation and ethics of care and consent. Wolf Babe tells stories, spills tea, shares food, laughs, resists, creates, celebrates, loves, and conspires to build a rounder and more just world.
About - Gallery 101
Gallery 101 has been presenting Asinabka’s visual arts component since their inaugural festival, Gzhe-minidoo Ki | God's Country in 2012. Through Asinabka’s programming we’ve hosted new, exciting Indigenous artists and filmmakers from Māori Land to the circumpolar north, Abya-Yala, and across Turtle Island. It’s an honour to hold space for these stories and to support the labour of love and laughs that goes into every Asinabka festival and event.
As an artist-run-centre, G101’s mandate is to exhibit contemporary visual, media, and performance arts that explore self-representations of decolonizing, feminist, intersectional counter-narratives. We strive to be an inclusive contemporary art space with awareness of current social, cultural, environmental discourses and movements guiding our curatorial practices. Powerful programming partnerships, like Asinabka, support our mission to present projects that provide a range of entry points for audiences to engage with and re-imagine issues especially related to land, water, race, histories, gender, ability, age and the relationships between Indigenous, Black, settler, newcomer, and migrant communities. G101 supports artists and curators at all stages of their careers, and accepts proposals for visual arts, performance, and media arts exhibitions every year. For details, check out: G101.ca/CallForProposals
"NAGUALA" BY CLAUDIA MINERVA MEDINA @DARC
Project Type: Experimental
Genres: Installation, video art
Runtime: 15 minutes
Completion Date: 2023
Presented in partnership with the Digital Arts Resource Centre (DARC), and the Embassy of Mexico in Canada
"Naguala” delves deep into the rich Mexican traditions of nagualismo, loosely translated as shapeshifting, offering a captivating and immersive experience. This three-channel video and two-channel sound project explores the mystical realm of the naguala, where the boundaries between, animals, plants, earth, cosmos, reality and the supernatural dissolve and are reconfigured. The Naguala guide invites you to consider yourself beyond the human form, forever transforming, continually being woven into the fabric of life and death, the macro and the micro. The naguala asks, "Who are you outside of your skin?"
Directors Statement
My work in film, video, and sound was catalyzed by a desire to explore, interpret and share the traditions, beliefs, and histories of my mixed cultural heritage. In particular, it was the stories of my Nahua grandmother, a traditional “curandera” (or healer) that drew me to wanting to learn as much as possible about the origins and practice of healing systems that persisted and evolved through the process of colonization. It was by spending time with her, and recording audio and video of her, that I realized that the stories she was sharing not only connected me in a deeply personal way to my ancestors and family history, but also spoke to universal themes of love, spirit, pain, and transformation. My newest work, Naguala draws from the ancient shapeshifter tradition of which my mother’s home community is known for. Using layered imagery, four channels of video projection and two channels of soundscape, the installation looks to tear the surface off the colonized interpretation of inherent evil and fear in the concept of Nagualismo to reveal the beauty, wisdom, and teachings beneath. These are teachings rooted in our shifting and yet consistently relational connections to the non human aspects of life both on earth and beyond.
Artist Bio
Claudia Medina is the proud daughter of a Nahua/Mexican mother and Italian father who left their homelands to start a new life on the Sunshine Coast of Canada in Tla’Amin territory, also known as Powell River/qathet. After many years working, travelling and studying in Latin America, Asia and Europe, Claudia eventually returned to the coast to raise her daughter Alma while continuing her art practice in film and video.
About - Microcinema @ DARC
DARC is a not-for-profit, artist-run media art centre that fosters the growth and development of artists through access to equipment, training, mentorship, and programming. The DARC Microcinema is a small-scale community cinema that offers independent filmmakers and media artists a space to publicly screen their work for free.
Gerald McMaster • Pōhaikealoha Panoke • Miguel Sosme
LOCATION: Asinabka Festival Office (2 Daly Ave., A214)
Voyaging Home by Pōhaikealoha Panoke
New platforms! Played on computer, handheld device, or mini portable arcade machine—you navigate the stars as a voyager like your ancestors before you, but in order to move forward, you first need to discover where you (and your ancestors) are from. Learn language and prepare for an Indigenous future in this personal adventure featuring beautiful ambient music and a heartfelt story among the stars.
Selected Works by Gerald McMaster
Gerald Raymond McMaster is a curator, artist, and author and a Plains Cree member of the Siksika Nation. McMaster draws and paints with humour and an ironic juxtaposition of traditional and contemporary pop culture elements. This show features a unique collection of tactile paintings, intended for people with visual impairments as well as the sighted.. "See" this stunning selection of paintings in the Asinabka Festival Office!
The Colours of the Earth
Runway of Mexican Textile Art by Miguel Sosme
Presented in partnership with the Embassy of Mexico in Canada
For over 14 years, Sosme Campos has collected artisan textiles and handicrafts from various regions of Mexico. His love for threads has also driven him to create, design, and weave his own garments, establish his own brand, and develop a textile line with a unique mark where tradition and modernity converge.
The present exhibition showcases the garments Sosme has selected for his collection. It includes textiles from his native Veracruz and neighbouring states such as Puebla, Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Tlaxcala, most of which are dyed with natural dyes. The exhibition provides a valuable insight into Mexico's millennia-old textile tradition, its creators, its culture, and its intricate (and still unknown) aesthetics. The collection shows the vision that Indigenous communities have of traditional fashion, as well as the capacity for innovation, adaptation and creation for external markets.
Artist Bios
Miguel Sosme is a Mexican textile artist, poet, cultural promoter and slow fashion designer. He holds a PhD in Anthropology from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. His work explores intersections of gender, race, ecology, social class and creativity in indigenous textile tradition of Latin America. He's author of the book "Tejedoras de esperanza", focused in the gender experience of the nahua weavers from Zongolica, Veracruz, and producer of the film "Voices from the loom", based in his book. In 2021 Sosme founded “Tilmahtli”, a cultural project specialized in the promotion of Mexican textile art.
NOTE: Miguel Sosme will be in attendance. Similar textiles will be available for purchase during the festival.*
*Miguel is also the Producer of the film "Tlakimilolli: "Voces del Telar (Voices of the Loom)" screening in the Beauty & Abundance program.
Pōhai is a Kanaka Maoli storyteller, interactive media producer, and emerging filmmaker from Waiʻanae, Hawaiʻi. While working on indie interactives and founding a cultural learning site for Kanaka to reconnect with ancestral knowledge, Pōhai landed a mentorship with Netflix to develop and hone her screenwriting skills. She went on to write and direct her first short film in May of this year alongside her first gig for directing story on a documentary in collaboration with her local waʻa (canoe) community. Whether storytelling in interactives, animation, or film, Pōhai weaves culture and iIndigenous resilience into her narratives, hoping to create works that portray the future as one of empowerment and abundance for nNative pPeoples.
