SLUT ISLAND

We’re remembering to take care

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 akerIako’tsi:rareh Amanda LickersPhoenix InanaFatim 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

hot waters

by Fatim Yassine Sirois Sanoussi

digital video
9m 4s

Sacred Seven: Trash Clan & Selected Works

by Iako’tsi:rareh Amanda Lickers

‘Sacred Seven’ are the trash clan tributes, which are all about celebrating relations who thrive against all odds and who are often unsung heroes. These works highlight the importance of interconnectedness in kinship and land based relations while uplifting Haudenosaunee visual culture. There is also something to be said about who  disappears first, as a warning – such as bats, frogs – and who is seen as a pest for surviving, like gulls and raccoons. Those who disappear first are a warning through their vanishing; their absence is eerie, it is not natural and it is a ripple of what is to come. Yet it is the scavengers who are demonized for making-do when industrial civilization has invaded their homelands. Prints of this series will be available for pre-order.
‘Selected Works’ includes “Beading Kinship” and “Hoof Lady Vibes”, two commissions I did recently for fellow onkwehon:we artists, as promotional materials for their own art performances. Each piece contains colours, symbols, and medicines that are personally and culturally significant, adapted as part of an original photograph provided by each. It was important to me to include these pieces as they embody the relations of friendship and family that facilitate interconnection critical to continuing on. Prints not available.
9 fine art prints
11 x 17″

Prints of the Sacred Seven series available for pre-order.