Constellation/Conversation
Performance: September 16, 2016 @ 8PM
Installation: September 17-30, 2016
Artspace, 378 Alymer St.
Tanya Lukin Linklater and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, along with Layli Long Solider, cheyanne turions, and Cris Derksen will present Constellation/Conversation, a new collaborative performance and installation work, September 16th-30th at Artspace.
Constellation/Conversation will begin on Friday September 16th with a single-evening durational performance by Simpson and Derksen, where they will perform Simpson’s poem “How To Steal A Canoe.” The performance will be followed by responses from turions, Long Soldier, Lukin Linklater. Each response may assume different forms, including text, performance, and spoken word.
Simpson’s song will serve as a generative departure for responses by artist, Tanya Lukin Linklater, poet, Layli Long Solider and curator, cheyanne turions. Following the responses a conversation between the five Indigenous women will take place in the gallery space. The conversation will aim to expand the conceptual spaces and may consider Indigenous peoples’ relationships with objects, museums, repatriation and storytelling. The ephemeral remnants of the performance will be left in the space until the conclusion of the exhibition on September 30th.
Bios
Tanya Lukin Linklater
Tanya Lukin Linklater’s performance collaborations, videos, photographs and installations have been exhibited nationally and internationally. She is compelled by relationships between bodies, histories, poetry, pedagogy, Indigenous conceptual spaces – including Indigenous languages, and institutions. Her work has been exhibited and performed at EFA Project Space + Performa, NYC, Museum of Contemporary Art Santiago, Chilé, SBC Gallery, Montreal, Western Front, Vancouver, Images Festival + Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto, Remai Modern, Saskatoon, Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton, and elsewhere. In 2016 she will present work at La Biennale de Montréal – Le Grand Balcon curated by Philippe Pirotte. Her poetry and essays have been published in C Magazine, BlackFlash Magazine, Yellow Medicine Review, Taos International Journal of Poetry and Art, Drunken Boat, Ice Floe, and in publications by Access Gallery, Western Front, and McLaren Art Centre. Tanya studied at University of Alberta (M.Ed.) and Stanford University (A.B. Honours). She is currently a graduate student in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University. She originates from the Native Villages of Afognak and Port Lions in southern Alaska and is based in northern Ontario, Canada. http://tanyalukinlinklater.com
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg artist, musician, poet and writer, who has been widely recognized as one of the most compelling Indigenous voices of her generation. Her work breaks open the boundaries between story and song—bringing audiences into a rich and layered world of sound, light, and sovereign creativity.
As a writer, Leanne was named the inaugural RBC Charles Taylor Emerging writer byThomas King, and she has been nominated for two National Magazine Awards. She has published extensive fiction and poetry in both book and magazine form. Her second book of short stories and poetry, This Accident of Being Lost will be published by House of Anansi Press in Spring 2017.
Leanne’s new album, f(l)light, is a haunting collection of story-songs that effortlessly interweave Simpson’s complex poetics and multi-layered stories of the land, spirit, and body with lush acoustic and electronic arrangements. Recorded and produced by an acclaimed cast of Indigenous and non-Indigenous musicians including: Jonas Bonnetta (Evening Hymns), James Bunton (Ohbijou, Light Fires, Forest City Lovers), Juno-nominated Cree/Metis cellist Cris Derksen, Nick Ferrio (The Burning Hell), Ojibwe/Cree singer-songwriter Tara Williamson, and Anishinaabe singer-songwriter Ansley Simpson, f(l)ight will be released September 30, 2016 on RPM Records.
cheyanne turions
cheyanne turions is an independent curator and writer who holds a master’s degree in Visual Studies from the University of Toronto. From the farmlands of Treaty 8, she is of settler and Indigenous ancestry. Her work approaches the space of exhibition as alive—the gallery is a space of dialogue where the propositions of artists come into contact with publics, questioning ways of seeing and being in relation. Recent curatorial projects include How a Living Day is Made at the Doris McCarthy Gallery with works by Aisha Sasha John, Rachelle Sawatsky and Walter Scott; and The Fraud that Goes Under the Name of Love at Simon Fraser University’s Audain Gallery, co-curated with Amy Kazymercyk, with works by Hannah Black, Skeena Reece, Mika Rottenberg and others. Forthcoming writing projects include contributions to MAWA’s Desire/Change: Contemporary Canadian Feminist Art and Duane Linklater’s Wood Land School: Critical Anthology. She sits on the Board of Directors for Kunstverein Toronto, the Editorial Advisory Committee for C Magazine and the Education and Community Engagement Committee at the Art Gallery of Ontario. She is the director of No Reading After the Internet (Toronto) and the Artistic Director at Trinity Square Video.
Cris Derksen
Cris Derksen is an Aboirginal cellist/composer known for building layers of sound into captivating performances. Her music braids the traditional and contemporary in multiple dimensions, weaving her traditional classical training and her aboriginal ancestry with new school electronics, creating genre defying music.
in the summer of 2015 Cris released the album Orchestral Powwow. Originally conceived by Derksen and Robert Todd of the Tribal Spirit Powwow label, the project responds to a perceived need to truly incorporate Aboriginal artists in art that claims Aboriginal credit. After an exploration with Robert of ideas around what defines Orchestral Powwow, Cris spent a year composing and transcribing using Tribal Spirit’s library of powwow albums. Players on the recording, and upcoming live performances, comprise Cris on cello, the 11-piece Chippewa Travelers powwow group, Jennifer Kriesberg on vocals, and a 9-piece symphonic ensemble.
Cris obtained a Bachelor of Music in Cello Performance at the University of British Columbia and shared the title of Principal Cellist with the UBC Symphony Orchestra.
Layli Long Soldier
Layli Long Soldier holds a BFA in creative writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA from Bard College. She resides in Tsaile, AZ on the Navajo Nation and is an English faculty member at Diné College. She has served as a contributing editor to Drunken Boat. Her poems and critical work have appeared in The American Poet, The American Reader, The Kenyon Review Online, American Indian Journal of Culture and Research, PEN America, The Brooklyn Rail, Eleven Eleven, and Mud City, among others. She is a recipient of the 2015 NACF National Artist Fellowship. Her first chapbook of poetry is titled, Chromosomory (Q Ave Press, 2010) and forthcoming manuscript is titled WHEREAS (Graywolf Press, 2017).
Slow Scrape Tanya Lukin Linklater, 2015 Photo Credit: Chris Randall