Curated by Dayna Danger
Aaniin, Dayna Danger ndizhnikaas, Métis -Saulteaux ndow. Wabyska muckwa ndodem niinda’aw, Wini-nipi ndoonjiba.
I asked four local Tiohtià:ke visual artists and creatives to submit or produce a work for a virtual and physical art show at Le Cagibi for Slut Island. In this exhibition, virtually, you’ll have access to three performances created by Phoenix Inana, Fatim Yassine Sirois Sanoussi and rudi aker. In the physical realm, at Le Cagibi on Saint Laurent, prints by Iako’tsi:rareh will be on display. (a smaller run of prints will be ready for pre-order soon)
With so much that is uncertain in our current existence, it took some time for everything to come together.
I was struck by the many little acts of kindness I witnessed in these artists’ work. I understand little acts of kindness to be gifts we give to others. To remind one another that there is good outside of us, to not lose hope. These gestures of care can often be overlooked. There are reminders all around us, once we slow down to pay attention to their gifts. Gifts can be honouring our urban four legged relatives, the winged ones, the critters who resist alongside us. Gifts can be washing your hair and honoring that intimate moment you have with yourself. The gifts of low whispers of language are the ancestors reminding you to exist. Gifts of nimble fingertips sewing our heart medicines back together. I look to my QTBIPOC community of artists and creatives in so called Montreal for inspiration and practices of taking care of ourselves. In order to survive, we get good at taking care of each other, but we can’t forget ourselves. To give yourself an act of kindness is an act of resistance. It’s how we’re remembering to take care.
rudi aker • Iako’tsi:rareh Amanda Lickers • Phoenix Inana • Fatim Yassine Sirois Sanoussi
CHI MIIGWETCH
pskihqimins (made in our image)
by rudi aker
pskihqimins (made in our image) is a video-performance offered as an absurdist response to the term “apple factory” as a colloquial, racist descriptor of Residential Schools. Through the fluidity and familiarity of bead-working and the monotony of repetitive motion, pskiqimins explores the concept of the factory through the making of a series of wild strawberries. Strawberries acting as a symbol of love and care, a bearer of teachings on patience and reciprocity – the berry’s re-making imagines an alternative to the industrial and colonial histories of assimilation, one made in our image.
digital video
8m 36s
Qalam Queer
by Phoenix Inana
ASMR has been something I have been using to cope with exquisite loneliness, diasporic grief and alienation. As a queer Arab-African drag performer and a language artist, Qalam Queer is a first in a series of ASMR videos exploring my languages of queerness and archiving knowledge-bases for my queer diasporic SWANA communities to build on and transform.
digital video
12m 36s
Sacred Seven: Trash Clan & Selected Works