Column

Meech Boakye (BA in Visual Studies from the University of Toronto) is an artist and writer currently based in “Portland, OR.” Their practice is rooted in relationships with flora, fungal, and microbial kin as armatures for learning how to be in a community.


The Eramosa River was carved out as a glacial spillway over 20,000 years ago. It flows through the treaty lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit and the ancestral territory of the Chonnonton (known to some as Attawandaron). Fed by underground springs, it flows along the course of a bedrock moraine south-west into the city of Guelph where it meets the Speed River. Together they flow into the Grand River and the Haldimand Tract treaty lands, the territory of the Haudenosaunee.[^1] The impacts of colonization, industrialization, and capitalist growth are evident along the riverbanks. In the first 100 years of settler colonization in the area, dams, levees, and ponds were constructed along the Eramosa to contain its flow, and many of the surrounding wetlands were drained for farming. Before this, the river was substantially wider, surrounded by low-lying marshy areas that were home to _manoomin_ [^2] and other important wetland species like cattail and native willows. As it winds into Guelph, the Eramosa flows through St. Patrick’s Ward, an industrial and working-class immigrant neighborhood that was once a floodplain. From as early as the 19th century, the riverbanks here were used as a holding place for industry and domestic refuse, and were designated as an official city landfill from 1935 to 1958.                                                                                                       

>###### _A holding place for_
glass, cinders, porcelain, fly ash, fibreglass, domestic refuse, lumber, charred wood, wire, brick, ash, fabric, metals, inorganics, petroleum hydrocarbon contaminants (PHCs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)[^3]

The Eramosa’s history as a landfill is currently unmarked and relatively unknown. In the early ’60s, the City covered the landfilled riverbanks in soil which began a process of rewilding that continues today. Through the decades, they have become botanized by plants, shrubs, and trees which root within their soil. Tree plantings happen yearly, organized by the City and local conservation groups. Many other species arrive in the curious ways that they travel: seeds dispersed by birds, animals, water, and wind, planted by neighbours, or by other means we don’t fully comprehend. If you look closely, fragments of waste are visible in parts of worn footpaths and entwined into the root systems of fallen trees—evidence of its historical and continued [^4] contamination.

Even more subtly, if you walk along the river, you will notice that while less disturbed areas remain home to indigenous plant communities, the landfilled areas are marked by the proliferation of plants from other places that are able to thrive in the poor and contaminated soil. These plants were transplanted to this continent as familiar food, medicine, agricultural aids, “exotic” garden plants, and escaped stowaways. They show up year after year, at times sprayed or injected with herbicides by City staff to slow their spread. Conservationists know these species have real consequences—for instance, without natural predators, they often reduce native biodiversity, growing into coarse monocultures in already disturbed areas—but their distinctive contributions exist alongside these consequences. Many of these plants decompose into new, nutrient-rich layers of soil, support the microbes and fungi in their work underground, and have root systems engaged in the important labour of holding the waste in place, preventing it and its toxins from leaching into the waterway.
                                

>###### _Holding in place_
European buckthorn, white willow, Japanese knotweed, garlic mustard, common plantain, Manitoba maple, ground elder, mullein, ragweed, black swallow-wort, periwinkle

Conservation science’s view of these plants as alien and invasive—in need of control and eradication—reproduces colonial binaries that echo xenophobic and militaristic responses to “foreign” or deviant human bodies. It also espouses a moral agency, an attitude of conquest, to beings that are surviving and reproducing as they were meant to. Resisting this perspective, we propose the term “transplant” for these species, as a way to consider connections between plant and human bodies beyond colonial categorization. Transplant thinking provides a shift in orientation that invites us to think about the interconnections between: plants that have migrated without agency; human bodies that have been transplanted against their will through displacement and enslavement; and cyborgian transfeminist ethics that offer pathways toward radical queer and anti-capitalist futures. While it is necessary to attend to the negative impacts transplant species have on biodiversity and ecosystem health, making kin [^5] with transplants allows us to sit with disturbance, providing modes with which to understand the unique ways we all require each other. [^6]

The two of us met in the summer of 2021, [^7] engaging in conversations in a virtual doc that acted as a repository for ideas, questions, research, and poetic musings. Transplant thinking emerged from these collaborative writings, which were accompanied by on-site relational and material experiments including walking, listening, foraging pigments, and creating decomposing biomaterial offerings. On a cool night just after the equinox, we invited a small group to gather along the Eramosa to share stories and build alliances with transplants. We harvested buckthorn berries to make into ink, considered the medicinal gifts of Japanese knotweed, observed the way the violets had recently arrived within a patch of garlic mustard, and reflected on how the presence of periwinkle has guided researchers to abandoned gravesites of enslaved Black communities. We sat in the dark quiet, around the light of hag’s tapers [^8] dipped in beeswax and lit like torches, and offered gifts. These practices of imagining speculative futures and enacting smallscale forms of remediation have productively complicated our relationships with disturbed sites. 


>###### _Offerings_
elderberry and swamp rose mallow plantings, zinnia and calendula flowers, a poem, blue vervain leaves, beeswax-dipped mullein stems, silence, an ear of corn, hulled walnuts, hair, a blank page, breath, joe-pye weed, evening primrose seeds [^9]

In the midst of climate catastrophe, there lies a strong desire to hold tightly onto the precious things that are left, which might disappear indefinitely within our lifetimes. Changing our relationships with transplant species requires us to contemplate adaptive solutions to such disappearances beyond belligerent eradication, and within deeper time frames. [^10] It asks us not only to build relationships that hold us accountable to the complex histories of degraded lands, but also to think dynamically about what they are becoming as a result. This shift in perspective invites speculative imaginations that further kinships between human and more-than-human neighbours—kinships that allow us to collaborate, heal, and continue on.

[^1]: In 2020–2021, land defenders occupying a site referred to as 1492 Land Back Lane protested a housing development in Caledonia on unceded Six Nations territory as part of long-standing resistance to settler and government land theft in the area. The development was officially canceled in July 2021.
[^2]: Anishnaabemowin: wild rice. This knowledge comes to Christina from a story told to her by Anishnaabekwe nookomis Waabanokwe N’dodem Aijijaak Zhashagi.
[^3]: Waste and contaminants found in Eramosa River Park in recent site testing. MMM Group Limited, _York Road and Eramosa River Parks Site Characterization Report for City of Guelph_, October 2015, https://guelph.ca/wpcontent/uploads/YorkRdEramosaRiverParks_SiteReport.pdf 
[^4]: In 2016, concerns were raised when the Guelph Polymer Distribution Inc. company was found responsible for spilling from rail cars thousands of plastic pellets, which entered the river through storm drains. Also, in 2019, over 4.4 million litres of raw sewage spilled into the Eramosa where the City was installing a new sewer line.
[^5]: From a 2020 talk by Robin Wall Kimmerer, “Learning the Grammar of Animacy: Subject and Object,” we accept Kimmerer’s invitation to use the word kin, a variation of the Anishinaabe aki, meaning “Earthly being” as a foundational perspective of care and respect when writing about land and relational work.
[^6]: Paraphrased from Donna Haraway, _Staying with the Trouble_ (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016): “Staying with the trouble requires making odd kin; that is, we require each other in unexpected collaborations and combinations, in hot compost piles.”
[^7]: Our collaboration began on a Zoom call initiated by curators Vince Rozario and Mitra Fakhrashrafi for the “Collective Offerings” exhibition at the Art Gallery of Guelph. 
[^8]: A folk name for dried stems of common mullein, _Verbascum thapsus_.
[^9]: "01 Afterwords - Collective Offerings, 2021," updated February 15, 2022, https:// meechboakye.com/Collective-Offerings
[^10]: For instance, garlic mustard is labeled an invasive plant because it releases sinigrin into the soil that inhibits the growth of mycorrhizal fungi and native plant species. However, recent research has found that as populations of garlic mustard age, sinigrin production is reduced until it eventually stops, allowing these native species to move back in. These findings suggest that this plant is actually self-regulating over a longer timeline. Jeffrey A. Evans, Richard A. Lankau, Adam S. Davis, S. Raghu, Douglas A. Landis, “Soil-Mediated Eco-evolutionary Feedbacks in the Invasive Plant _Alliaria petiolata_,” _Functional Ecology_ 30, no. 7 (July 2016): 1053–61.



Writer

By now we understand extraction as the political-ontological basis for the circulation of resources under neoliberal capitalism—and that agents of such appropriation scarcely do enough to respect, heal, and replenish their sources. From sex work and old-growth forests to ghost towns and lost languages, this issue explores artistic and activist practices that interrogate an array of extractive efforts and attempt to demarcate non-extractive modalities. 

Extraction

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Environment

Meech Boakye and Christina Kingsbury discuss how their shared work around the former landfill on the Eramosa River in Guelph led them to interrogate the perceived binary between native and so-called invasive species. 



Composition: Transplant Collaborations

Educational institutions perhaps have the most to learn. The newly established Centre for the Study of Black Canadian Diaspora (CSBCD) is under construction at OCAD University’s (OCAD U) Toronto campus. A research and exhibition hub, the Centre is dedicated to Black visual cultures in Canada. Among its stated aims is a mission to conduct inquiries that reject anthropological, extractivist, even scientific frameworks long entrenched in the academic study of specific cultural groups. Throughout the 20th century, Western scholars in the manner of artefact hunters generally extracted from local knowledge systems what they desired based upon self-interest. Black populations in the unceded and brutally settled lands that compose Canada share with First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities the fact that they have been studied as research subjects, with epistemological harm adding to the more visible forms of discrimination. The resulting scholarship, criticism, and anthropological documentary films about Black cultural production often occupy two categories: overtly racist, or laudatory but myopic. Both serve power by appropriating voices rather than recognizing the unique contexts in which members of diasporic groups organize themselves and create. Its work will almost certainly redress the invisibility or misrepresentation of Black artists within the so-called Canadian art canon, but the Centre’s more central purpose is to ensure a thriving future of permanence for Black artists, critics, and curators.

The Centre began taking shape in 2014 during the conference The State of Blackness: From Production to Presentation, convened by OCAD U professor Andrea Fatona and attended by artists, curators, and scholars. After this conference, the attendees vowed to remain connected to one another through the years, despite time and distance—not so much a personal choice in this instance but a political gesture. For Black artists and cultural organizers in Canada, permanence has been elusive. As scholar Joanna Joachim notes, it is closely tied to the suspect machinations of institutional power; the “small number of Black curators, critics and art historians in permanent positions within Canadian institutions is a constant hindrance to the entry of emerging professionals.”[^1] Perhaps more insidiously, she notes, large institutions continue to work with Black art professionals for singular events or momentary initiatives, worsening a “superficial and transient engagement with Black Canadian art.”

Various organizations have worked hard to remedy this issue, including the Black Speculative Arts Movement (BSAM), the Black Artists’ Network in Dialogue (BAND) Gallery, Toronto’s Nia Centre for the Arts, the Collective of Black Artists (COBA) of Toronto, devoted to the performing arts, and of course the Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia (BCCNS) founded in 1983. The Centre’s style of governance has been influenced by these progressive, collectivist arts foundations. Dr Fatona’a governance model rejects a top-down arrangement; collaboration is in the Centre’s DNA, with board and staff members laid out in concentric circles in the workflow software. Rather than directions coming from one source, ideas travel from the inside out and vice versa. Several State of Blackness participants including Michelle Jacques, Rinaldo Walcott, Dana Inkster, and Geneviève Wallen now sit on the seven-member advisory board of the Centre. A four-member research team consists of Aisha Simpson, Donica Willis, Nya Lewis, and Fabiyino Germain-Bajowa, who have backgrounds in curation, design, and digital futures. Researchers are largely recent university graduates who specialize in the study of diasporic communities and are supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)[^2]; while they may be less established, they have dominion over their investigations, and advise all members and staff of new discoveries and potential modes of exhibition. In this everyday, practical way, the newer curators—like many younger people—give voice to the latest in critical theory, technological modes of inquiry, and exhibition while the Advisory Board might assist with their knowledge, community standing, and professional affiliations.

The 1000 square-foot (92 square-metre) space is designed to be one in which communities and ideas happen upon each other, with research stations, meeting areas, and an exhibition space. Today, researchers are digitizing works of art, critical writing, and ephemera to fulfil one of the Centre’s other main goals: the creation of a nationally known digital platform that indexes art and exhibitions by members of the Black diaspora, complete with detailed metadata. Artworks from personal collections, public galleries, and artist- run centres across the country have been shipped to the Centre for digitization and eventual exhibition. For film and video works, the process is being carried out with the guidance of VTape. By unearthing everything from carefully preserved works to neglected pieces nearly lost to time, the Centre’s researchers are bringing attention to works of art deserving of wider discussion and scrutiny. More generally, the team hopes to create favourable conditions for intergenerational knowledge-sharing through the presentation and discussion of historical works whose relevance continues to reverberate.

The Centre’s first co-created program, which ran online through the winter of 2022, offers an example of what’s to come. Germain-Bajowa and curator Temple Marucci-Campbell each screened a collection of experimental videos, short films, photographs, and performance artworks from VTape’s archive. Their respective projects, “To Remember and Repair” and “Tell the Body,” shone new light on everything from West Indian reflections on the trials of migration to Canada in the ’80s to recent works examining the body, skin, hair, hypervisibility, and invisibility. Some of these works had not been viewed in years, a gap the accompanying curatorial introductions and online panel discussions with invited critics sought to bridge.

Throughout decades of art research in North American and European institutions, artists have been objects of knowledge to be analyzed. The Centre therefore endeavours to consider artists of interest as co-creators of the research, not as objects separate from the research: artists’ knowledge systems are valued; their statements are viewed as a form of labour; and their connections to their work and communities are treated with respect, given the central role of identity in an artist’s life and the inevitable surfacing of personal and collective histories during the research process. Empathy, compassion, and care guide this approach. Rather than mere celebration and aesthetic validation, anti-extractivism offers a framework for deeper engagement between artists, curators, critics, and those curious about the work, the artistic process, the community, and the systems of knowledge held therein. Put simply, creators of culture are empowered to represent their artworks and themselves. As Fatona explains, “By creating our own spaces, we can address the diversity in our Blackness.”[^3]

Carving out a hub for community-formation, creative engagement, and the documentation and support of Black creative practices in the form of the CSBCD is a direct response to the impermanence _and_ placelessness experienced by many Black Canadian artists whose careers have been truncated by a lack of sustained professional and creative affiliations and community. The Centre’s focus on long-term relationships with artists and curators, and its own sustained existence supported by OCAD U, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, and at least five years of SSHRC funding will hopefully work to quell the anxiety of temporariness Joachim outlines. Many board members also have decades-long relationships with Vtape, A Space, and the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre, including some current collaborations that will continue for years to come, along with more recent ones with Vancouver’s VIVO and Or Gallery.

Any department or centre whose work takes place within the physical and ideological bounds of a large institution risks perpetuating the host institution’s existing deficiencies. OCAD U has a legacy of homogeneous white masculinity among its faculty, which began with its establishment in 1876 by several members of the Group of Seven, the paragons of masculine, nation-founding landscape painters.[^4] Therefore, a mindful separation of the Centre’s operations from those of the university proper is part of its mandate: its research team is composed of Black women, women hold five of the seven spots on the advisory board; meetings, which take place off-campus or outdoors, begin with wellbeing check-ins; and hiring takes place independently of the institution. As Fatona has said, “[W]e have not been able to sustain our own spaces; institutions and the stewards of contemporary art in this country continue to construct the spaces that then we have to contort ourselves to fit into.”[^5] While the university is integral to ensuring the Centre’s longevity and sustained access to funding streams, the CSBCD must exercise independence in order to adhere to its own mission.

Aristotle was fascinated with the dialectic between permanence and change, arguing that only the _form_ of matter changes, but that the basic matter remains the same. Interestingly, he offered bricks as an example, suggesting that by breaking down brick walls—perhaps of an institution—we do not change the matter of the bricks. In fact, the permanence of the clay in the brick helps us comprehend and accept change, since we can recognize it as the same type of matter even after its form has been altered. But, now reconfigured, the bricks cease to function as a barrier.

[^1]: Joanna Joachim, “Curating, Criticism and Care, or, ‘Showing Up’ as Praxis,” _C Magazine_, no. 145 (Spring 2020): 20.
[^2]:  Administrators of research and funds are university employees like myself,  illustrating OCAD U’s commitment to the Centre even as it addresses its own separate history, which has faced charges of faculty homogeneity.
[^3]:  Andrea Fatona and Liz Ikiriko, “Speaking Ourselves Into Being,” _C Magazine_, no. 144 (Winter 2020): 38.
[^4]:  Faculty across Ontario remained predominantly homogenous into the ’90s with women accounting for only 18 to 20 percent of tenured professors. In 2014, of the 94 faculty members at OCAD University making more than $100,000, 89 were white. In recent years, OCAD U has foregrounded Indigenous faculty recruitment and has made efforts to address Black underrepresentation. Martin Hicks, Harvey P. Weingarten, Linda Jonker, and Shuping Liu, _The Diversity of Ontario’s Colleges: A Data Set to Inform the Differentiation Discussion_, Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario, September 12, 2013, https:/heqco.ca/wpcontent/uploads/2020/03/College_Differentiation_Report.pdf
[^5]:  Fatona and Ikiriko, 38.

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Anil Narine writes on how the Centre for the Study of Black Canadian Diaspora, currently under construction at OCAD U, aims to “reject anthropological, extractivist, even scientific frameworks long entrenched in the academic study of specific cultural groups.”

Tilling: Permanence for Black Diasporic Art in Canada 

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Editorial

**Jac Renée Bruneau** is a writer, editor and organizer based in Toronto. She was formerly the editor of _C Magazine_.

Extraction is the political-ontological basis for the circulation of resources under neoliberal capitalism—and agents of such appropriation scarcely do enough to respect, heal, and replenish their sources. Companies inflict harm knowing that potential fines for environmental damage pale in comparison to the profits that can be gleaned. Things get spilled, air changes, the water tastes different, records are broken. People are pushed out, poisoned, left disoriented, sick, cheated. And the doom goes on, ripples out.

Maggie Flynn’s _Trickle Down_ offers a substantial network of impacts, connecting entities and individuals in extractive industries and the art world. Years of research allow us to see connections between corporations, art institutions, and Indigenous communities impacted by intervention. The artist explains that she “prioritized information coming directly from leadership or grassroots groups of affected communities” and that “not all examples are meant to be cast in the same light.” Flynn writes, “As within any community, contrasting opinions may exist, even when \[Impact Benefit Agreements\] are in place.”

Zoë Heyn-Jones’s “Cooked Earth: Ambivalence in Terracotta” embraces grey areas, too, offering a sensuous movement through works by Dana Prieto, Bosco Sodi, Krista Belle Stewart, and Andrey Guaianá Zignnatto, all of whom use terracotta in “artisanal, land-based, site-responsive, and\[/or\] community-informed” ways. Acknowledging the naturalness of human dependence on land’s offerings, the writer thinks these artists might “enable us to complicate our rudimentary understandings of extractivism.”

Of course, extraction is about more than the removal of materials from the ground. Anil Narine authors this issue’s Tilling column, focused on the Centre for the Study of Black Canadian Diaspora currently under construction at OCAD U. Led by Andrea Fatona and dovetailing with her legendary _State of Blackness: From Production to Presentation_ (2014) conference, the Centre “reject\[s\] anthropological, extractivist, even scientific frameworks long entrenched in the academic study of specific cultural groups.” Building on the community-oriented work of other Black cultural organizations, and determined to keep an arm’s length from the university, the Centre has already begun building an ambitious, “nationally known digital platform that indexes art and exhibitions by members of the Black diaspora.”

Aamna Muzaffar’s interview with Suneil Sanzgiri homes in on other aspects of extraction resulting from colonization. The artist’s latest film, _Golden Jubilee_, might be thought of as a multimedia, essayistic attempt to grapple with Goa’s past as a Portuguese colony, subject to iron ore mining and the cultural fracturing that ensued. Critical not only of those effects, but also of his own instinct to learn more, he says: “I ask about the overused terminology surrounding ideas of ‘mining the archive,’ by asking, ‘Where does extraction follow us?" ... The term ‘found footage’ too, which also seems to have somewhat colonial connotations. Did you really ‘find’ something, or was it already somewhere and you’re just absorbing its value? I much prefer what Ariella Azoulay terms working archivally as being ‘co-conspirators through time.’”

Solomon Chiniquay, in this issue’s artist project, taps into this idea of temporal continuance, in the context of land defence. Having seen a “sun-faded newspaper clipping found in his Îyârhe Nakoda grandmother’s home with the heading ‘Who Are We Without the Buffalo?’ collaboratively authored by several elders many decades ago,” he sensed the urgency of the protests at the Ada’itsx/ Fairy Creek Blockade in defense of the old-growth forests. “Tended to by the Ditidaht, Huu-ay-aht, and Pacheedaht peoples who … harvested in respectful, considerate, and reciprocal ways,” the trees are now under threat by the Teal-Jones Group. Guest curator Nicole Kelly Westman points out that Chiniquay actively works against the tradition of “photographers and photojournalists who act like hunters, focused on finding an image that precisely encapsulates complexities that are too challenging to succinctly summarize.” This choice “reveals to us … a set of boundaries that are considerately navigated. After all, not everything is for the taking.”

Valérie Frappier profiles Alana Bartol, whose practice has focused on the aftermath of the oil, gas, and coal industries in the Prairies for about a decade. Most recently, she considered the two-faced nature of state communication around extractive sites. Having visited a number of abandoned mines, ghost towns, visitor interpretation centres, and museums in Southern Alberta, Bartol notes that these histories of settler-colonial extraction are “acknowledged in this very odd kind of uncritical way… To say that this is a significant site, how do we really understand that significance, and how do we learn from it?” She sees collaboration as necessary in tackling these questions, having initiated a project called _Remediation Room_, featuring work by Christina Battle, Tamara Lee-Anne Cardinal, Rita McKeough, Nurgül Rodriguez, and Mia Rushton and Eric Moschopedis, to “counter the Alberta government’s Canadian Energy Centre campaign.”

In “Dreaming of Decriminalization,” Lauren Gabrielle Fournier explores an exhibition at the London ICA that similarly unified voices around a cause, in this case the decriminalization of sex work— which would allow for sex workers to carry out their work safely, openly, with self-determination, and without the exploitative, gentrifying forces that tend to accompany legalization. Curated by Yves Sanglante and Elio Sea, in collaboration with the Sex Worker Advocacy and Resistance Movement, 13 international artists with lived experience in sex work bolster this judicial conversation. Fournier also tethers it to the Canadian context, where the law “still effectively criminalizes sex work by criminalizing the purchasing” of it and any related third-party activities.

Meech Boakye and Christina Kingsbury’s shared work around the former landfill on the Eramosa River in Guelph breathes fresh life into yet another binary: native and so-called invasive species. Thinking about the ways that landscapes change in response to anthropocentric activity, they see conservation science’s view of the latter as reproducing “colonial binaries that echo xenophobic and militaristic responses to ‘foreign’ or deviant human bodies,” and “espous\[ing\] a moral agency, an attitude of conquest, to beings that are surviving and reproducing as they were meant to.” They propose, instead, the term “transplant,” which “invites us to think about the interconnections between: plants that have migrated without agency, ways that human bodies have been transplanted against their will through displacement and enslavement, and cyborgian transfeminist ethics that offer pathways toward radical queer and anti-capitalist futures.” I’m reminded of Bartol’s sighting of mullein growing from a slag heap; a known accumulator of heavy metals, the non-native plant (which has also been used as a torch for miners underground) is engaged in a modest remediation effort. Boakye and Kingsbury write that many transplants “decompose into new, nutrient-rich layers of soil, support the microbes and fungi in their work underground, and have root systems engaged in the important labour of holding the waste in place, preventing it and its toxins from leaching.” As everywhere, contradictions abound.

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Editor Jac Renée Bruneau reflects on the issue’s theme: _Extraction._

Editorial: Extraction 

Feature

Maggie Flynn is the artist and researcher behind Trickle Down. Her practice includes performance, listening, and writing, all underpinned by a commitment to pleasure and pragmatism. A settler of Irish and French ancestry, she currently lives on unceded land that is the traditional territory of the Abenaki people.

###### The following text accompanies eight pages of research in graphical form. They visualize the impacts of relationships between extractive industries and the cultural sector in Canada.

###### Project by Maggie Flynn
###### Design by Krishna Balakrishnan

A quick reading of this work might induce scorn toward certain entities. But mining, oil, and gas companies work within the system offered to them by the government of Canada. And when companies are caught stepping out of bounds of the law, the resulting fines pale in comparison to their profits. In other words, every piece of bad news in this work is enabled by this nation’s legal and regulatory environment.

With this in mind, how do the choices made by Canadian museums, galleries, and art festivals to partner with extractive industries shape culture in Canada? How do the relationships between cultural institutions, extractive industries, Indigenous communities, workers, and ecosystems contribute to belief systems that influence economic choices, political will, and legislation?

Corporate sponsorships are mutually beneficial agreements between non-profits and corporations. When cultural institutions partner with a mining or oil company, they promote a hospitable environment for extractive industries. Agreements require deliverables from the non-profit, usually leveraging their audiences as targets for the sponsor’s messaging. When the sponsor is a soap company, they’re trying to sell more soap. When the sponsor is a petroleum company, though, I don’t believe they are trying to get consumers to use more gas or plastic. I think they need the average voter to see the company as a friendly face whose projects don’t need to be scrutinized, in an industry that doesn’t need to be too closely regulated.

I’m not suggesting conspiratorial motives coming from behind closed doors; I’m describing very mainstream ways that philanthropy functions in Canada. There’s a national organization, Business / Arts, whose mission is to “build strong lasting partnerships between the arts, business and government in Canada.”[^1] This mission could theoretically be fulfilled without artwashing the activities of irresponsible companies. But having completed the two levels of training by Business / Arts, I can confirm there were no resources (even when I asked for them) to help arts professionals determine the appropriateness of lending the sway of their institution to the reputation repair of a given corporation. Non-profit board members and staff need to assess whether a sponsorship is worth the revenue if it damages the esteem given to the institution by their audience. This is difficult to do, especially when, for example, a C-suite executive of the sponsoring corporation is on the board.

It is not a realistic objective for cultural institutions to say there is no dirty
money in their budget. I can’t even say there is no dirty money in my pocket. In a country where historical and contemporary colonialism has been financed by all of the national banks, uncontaminated dollars are scarce.

Rather, I’d propose that cultural institutions choose not to assist companies in obscuring their records of environmental and human rights abuses by offering them positive brand association. In particular, it seems important for cultural institutions attempting reconciliation with Indigenous communities not to partner with companies that are, for example, waging legal battles against Indigenous peoples’ inherent rights.

Cultural institutions have the power to establish new norms, but we need to make changes rather than carry on with dated fundraising strategies. Such changes may include accepting that the bottom line must shift in order to prioritize institutional integrity. However, we can also hold space for the possibility that by reallocating the energy dedicated to cultivating and stewarding certain corporate relationships, institutions might actually find a stronger return on investment elsewhere. A few propositions for practices to adopt:

- Redirect the time of fundraising staff to seek sponsorship from companies who pay living wages, who take responsibility for their supply chains, and whose business models don’t depend on displacing Indigenous people or the irreversible destruction of ecosystems.
- Create institutional policies that outline criteria for when a corporate sponsor is considered in conflict with the institution’s vision. Make space for Indigenous staff, board members, and community stakeholders to shape such policies, be part of decision-making, and receive appropriate compensation for their knowledge and labour.
- Shift philanthropy norms away from expectations of acclaim. Make it gauche to name a role, project, gallery, or building after a corporation or wealthy person. Make it exciting to involve diverse stakeholders in establishing a meaningful name, and/or more dignified forms of exchange. Celebrate anonymous donors loudly.
- When a non-profit board member is also a corporate director or a high-level executive, ensure that the registration summary of their company’s in-house and consultant lobbyists is provided to fellow board members, to consider whether the member’s impartiality may be compromised on certain subjects.                   




There is enough brilliance in the arts community—among cultural workers, artists, audiences—to imagine many more ways to cultivate better practices in fundraising and board governance. But leadership needs the will to listen and enact change. In the meantime, cultural institutions that have no standards for their corporate sponsors should expect scrutiny.

**Notes on Process: ** Every relationship represented in this flow chart is more complex than could be contained in these pages. As a settler making work about an industry that disproportionately impacts Indigenous communities, I prioritized information coming directly from leadership or grassroots groups of affected communities. While many instances noted in this work involve clear damage caused by extractive industries, not all examples are meant to be cast in the same light. In particular, I felt it important not to ignore Impact Benefit Agreements between Indigenous nations and extractive companies when they came up in my research. I have no value judgement on such agreements, because I support Indigenous self-determination, full stop. As within any community, contrasting opinions may exist, even when such agreements are in place. To understand the perspectives of those on the ground, a deeper engagement is required.       

                                                                                 


###### The following citations correspond to the annotations in Trickle Down, by Maggie Flynn.         



1\. Edith Argüelles, “Tribunal federal ordena a Semarnat anular permiso a Minera San Xavier,” La Jornada, October 30, 2009, https://www.jornada.com.mx/2009/10/30/index.php?section=estados&article=035n1est.

2\. Frente Amplio Opositor, “Mexico to Shut Down New Gold’s Cerro de San Pedro Mine – Canadian Parliamentarians and Mexican Congress members urge company to comply with the law,” MiningWatch Canada, November 12, 2009, https://miningwatch.ca/news/2009/11/12/mexico-shut-down-new-gold-s-cerro-de-san-pedro-mine-canadian-parliamentarians-and.

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4\. Vicente Juárez, “Trece intoxicados por contaminación causada por Minera San Xavier en SLP,” La Jornada, May 29, 2014, https://www.jornada.com.mx/2014/05/29/estados/033n1est.

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23\. Above Ground and Justiça Global, 15.

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27\. Yamana Gold, 49.

28\. “Chubut Governor Repeals Mining Law, Vows Public Vote After Days of Protests,” Buenos Aires Times, December 12, 2021, https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/argentina/chubut-governor-repeals-mining-law-vows-public-vote-after-days-of-protests.phtml.

29\. “Exploration,” Yamana Gold, accessed June 13, 2022, https://www.yamana.com/English/portfolio/exploration/default.aspx.

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33\. Cole Robertson, “Alumbrera, Producer of Riches, Poison and Corruption,” The Tyee, September 18, 2009, https://thetyee.ca/News/2009/09/18/Alumbrera/.

34\. “El contrabando minero de una sola empresa es de 8.267 millones de dólares al año,” Conclusion, February 22, 2021, https://www.conclusion.com.ar/politica/economia/el-contrabando-minero-de-una-sola-empresa-es-de-8-267-millones-de-dolares-al-ano/02/2021/.

35\. Darío Aranda, “Un stop a la megaminería,” Página 12, September 12, 2016, https://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/sociedad/3-309169-2016-09-12.html.

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37\. Caroline Desbiens and Bastien Sepúlveda, “Pekedamkam: Frontierism and the Unearthing of Indigenous Landscapes in Val-d’Or, Canada,” Journal of Historical Geography 65 (July 2019), 59–60, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0305748817301342.

38\. “Malartic, Quebec,” Native Land, accessed June 13, 2022, https://native-land.ca/.

39\. “Largest Gold Mine in Canada Settles With Affected Citizens Out of Court,” MiningWatch Canada, October 15, 2019, https://miningwatch.ca/news/2019/10/15/largest-gold-mine-canada-settles-affected-citizens-out-court.

40\. “INV Metals’ Loma Larga Project Acquired by Canadian Company With Toxic Environmental Record in Eastern Europe and Africa,” MiningWatch Canada, August 6, 2021, https://miningwatch.ca/blog/2021/8/6/inv-metals-loma-larga-project-acquired-canadian-company-toxic-environmental-record.

41\. “Overwhelming ‘No’ Vote in Southern Ecuador Referendum Targets INV Metals Project,” MiningWatch Canada, April 3, 2019, https://miningwatch.ca/blog/2019/4/3/overwhelming-no-vote-southern-ecuador-referendum-targets-inv-metals-project.

42\. “Ecuadorian Communities Welcome IAMGOLD’s Retreat, Warn INV Metals There’s No Social Licence for Quimsacocha,” MiningWatch Canada, June 22, 2012, https://miningwatch.ca/news/2012/6/22/ecuadorian-communities-welcome-iamgold-s-retreat-warn-inv-metals-there-s-no-social.

43\. “Overwhelming Vote in Southern Ecuador Sends Strong Message to Mining Companies,” MiningWatch Canada, February 11, 2021, https://miningwatch.ca/blog/2021/2/11/overwhelming-vote-southern-ecuador-sends-strong-message-mining-companies.

44\. “IAMGOLD Announces Filing of Early Warning Report in Connection with Dundee Precious Metals’ Proposed Acquisition of INV Metals,” IAMGOLD, May 31, 2021, https://www.iamgold.com/English/investors/news-releases/news-releases-details/2021/IAMGOLD-Announces-Filing-of-Early-Warning-Report-in-Connection-with-Dundee-Precious-Metals-Proposed-Acquisition-of-INV-Metals/default.aspx.

45\. “Operations,” IAMGOLD, accessed June 13, 2022, https://www.iamgold.com/English/operations/guidance/default.aspx.

46\. Caroline Desbiens and Bastien Sepúlveda, “Pekedamkam”

47\. “Malartic, Quebec,” Native Land, https://native-land.ca/

48\. “IAMGOLD to Proceed with Construction of the Côté Gold Project in Ontario, Canada,” IAMGOLD, July 21, 2020, https://www.iamgold.com/English/investors/news-releases/news-releases-details/2020/IAMGOLD-to-Proceed-with-Construction-of-the-Ct-Gold-Project-in-Ontario-Canada/default.aspx.

49\. Business / Arts, La Placa Cohen, and Nanos, Culture Track: Canada, (Toronto, ON: Business / Arts, 2018), 42, http://www.businessandarts.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/CT-Canada-Report.pdf.

50\. Danielle Kaeding, “‘This Valve Had Been Known to Leak’: Documents Show Superior Oil Refinery Knew About Equipment Issues Years Before 2018 Explosion,” Wisconsin Public Radio, May 3, 2022, https://www.wpr.org/valve-had-been-known-leak-documents-show-superior-oil-refinery-knew-about-equipment-issues-years.

51\. Danielle Kaeding, “Superior Residents File Class Action Lawsuit Against Husky Energy,” MPR News, September 4, 2018, https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/09/04/wpr-superior-residents-file-class-action-lawsuit-against-husky-energy-after-explosion.

52\. “Land Acknowledgement,” The Wisconsin Union, https://union.wisc.edu/about/land-acknowledgement/

53\. Lee Wilson, “First Nations in B.C. fighting Rio Tinto to Save Nechako River and Fishery,” APTN News, June 25, 2020, https://www.aptnnews.ca/featured/first-nations-in-b-c-fighting-rio-tinto-to-save-nechako-river-and-fishery/.

54\. Betsy Trumpener, “B.C. First Nation Chief Wants Alcan to Take Down the Kenney Dam,” CBC News, November 18, 2019, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/rio-tinto-alcan-sued-by-indigenous-bands-over-nechako-river-dam-1.5363820.

55\. “Saik’uz and Stellat’en First Nations Back in Court to Save the Nechako River and Its Fisheries,” Saik’uz First Nation, October 16, 2019, https://www.saikuz.com/events/newspress-releases/saikuz-stellaten-first-nations-v-rio-tinto-alcan-inc-british-columbia-canada.

56\. Jason Proctor, “Court Rejects First Nations’ Bid to Change Flow of River to Alleviate Damage Caused by Northern B.C. Dam,” CBC News, January 9, 2022, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/first-nations-nechako-rio-tinto-1.6308025.

57\. Kelly House, “Michigan Drops One Lawsuit, Revisits Another in Enbridge Line 5 Fight,” Bridge Michigan, November 30, 2021, https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-environment-watch/michigan-drops-one-lawsuit-revisits-another-enbridge-line-5-fight.

58\. Mary Annette Pember, “Michigan Tribe Banishes Enbridge Line 5 Pipeline,” Indian Country Today, May 11, 2021, https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/michigan-tribe-banishes-enbridge-line-5-pipeline.

59\. Tara Jeffrey, “Aamjiwnaang Based Group Concerned About Enbridge Plan,” The Observer, December 10, 2021, https://www.theobserver.ca/2012/12/10/aamjiwnaang-based-group-concerned-about-enbridge-plan.

60\. Colin Graf, “Gray Charges Dropped in Court,” Anishinabek News, January 16, 2017, https://anishinabeknews.ca/2017/01/16/gray-charges-dropped-in-court/.

61\. Mike De Souza, “Pipeline Watchdog Hid Evidence of Secret Enbridge Reports,” Canada’s National Observer, May 2, 2016, https://www.nationalobserver.com/2016/05/02/news/heres-how-enbridge-edited-federal-pipeline-audit.

62\. Mary Annette Pember, “Enbridge Takes the Gloves Off in Line 5 Battle,” Indian Country Today, May 9, 2022, https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/enbridge-takes-the-gloves-off-in-line-5-battle.

63\. “Westmoreland Coal Company v. Government of Canada,” Global Affairs Canada, accessed June 13, 2022, https://www.international.gc.ca/trade-agreements-accords-commerciaux/topics-domaines/disp-diff/westmoreland-02.aspx?lang=eng.

64\. Keyera Corporation, Annual Information Form, (Calgary, AB: Keyera Corporation, 2022), 35, https://www.keyera.com/assets/Attachments/Annual-Information-Form-2021.pdf.

65\. “Pipeline Leak Near Grizzly Protection Area,” Windspeaker, June 14, 2016, https://windspeaker.com/news/alberta-news-in-brief-for-june-15.  
 
66\. “Who Are the Aseniwuche Winewak,” Aseniwuche Winewak Nation, accessed June 13, 2022, https://www.aseniwuche.ca/.

67\. “Our Story,” Mountain Métis Centre, accessed June 13, 2022, https://mountainmetis.com/.

68\. Lincoln Brown, “ConocoPhillips Pipeline Leak Threatens Wildlife Area in Alberta,” Pipeline & Gas Journal, June 17, 2016, https://pgjonline.com/news/2016/06/conocophillips-pipeline-leak-threatens-wildlife-area-in-alberta.

69\. The Canadian Press, “ConocoPhillips fined $180K for 2016 pipeline leak in northwest Alberta,” Global News, May 31, 2018, https://globalnews.ca/news/4245462/conocophillips-fine-2016-pipeline-leak-northwest-alberta/.

70\. “Exploration and Production,” Repsol Canada, accessed June 27, 2022, https://www.repsol.ca/en/index.cshtml.

71\. “Corporate Sponsorship: Impact and Benefits,” Arts Commons, accessed June 13, 2022, https://www.artscommons.ca/support-us/corporate-sponsorship/impact-benefits.

72\. KJ Dakin and Trina Moyles, “Indigenous Farmers Confront Canada’s Goldcorp,” Briarpatch, September 1, 2014, https://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/indigenous-farmers-confront-canadas-goldcorp.

73\. Miles Howe, “Been to Jail for justice?,” Halifax Media Co-op, June 11, 2015, https://halifax.mediacoop.ca/story/been-jail-justice/33648.

74\. Dakin and Moyles, “Indigenous Farmers Confront Canada’s Goldcorp.”

75\. Ibid.

76\. “Hudbay Minerals Inc.: Form 40-F,” U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, March 28, 2022, https://sec.report/Document/0001062993-22-008763/.

77\. Klippensteins, Barristers and Solicitors, “About,” Choc Versus Hudbay, accessed June 13, 2022, https://www.chocversushudbay.com/.

78\. “Court Bulletin: Crude Oil Refinery Operator Fined $475,000 for Environmental Protection Act Violations,” Ontario Newsroom, December 22, 2022, https://news.ontario.ca/en/court/59815/crude-oil-refinery-operator-fined-475000-for-environmental-protection-act-violations.

79\. “Updates on Spills,” Aamjiwnaang Solidarity Against Chemical Valley, accessed June 13, 2022, https://aamjiwnaangsolidarity.org/updates-on-spills/.

80\. “Our Donors & Supporters,” Canada West Foundation, accessed June 13, 2022, https://cwf.ca/support-us/donors-supporters/.

81\. “‘It’s a disgrace’: A Year After Ontario Promised Change, Toxic Emissions Still Spilling Into Sarnia,” Global News, November 14, 2018, https://globalnews.ca/news/4659040/toxic-emissions-spilling-into-sarnia-year-after-ontario-promised-change/.

82\. “Sponsorship,” National Gallery of Canada, accessed June 13, 2022, https://www.gallery.ca/support/sponsorship.

83\. “Our Company,” Touchstone Exploration Inc., accessed June 13, 2022, https://touchstoneexploration.com/our-company/.

84\. Steven Mufson, “Exxon Mobil Pipeline Leaks ‘A Few Thousand’ Barrels of Crude Oil in Arkansas,” The Washington Post, March 31, 2013, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/exxon-mobil-pipeline-leaks-a-few-thousand-barrels-of-crude-oil-in-arkansas/2013/03/31/6868d6f6-9a2e-11e2-a941-a19bce7af755_story.html.

85\. “Chevron Becomes First Organization to Be Appointed a Fellow of the Glenbow,” Chevron Canada, accessed June 13, 2022, https://canada.chevron.com/news/2018/chevron-canada-makes-history-with-glenbow.

86\. “Our Businesses: Oil Sands,” Chevron Canada, accessed June 13, 2022, https://canada.chevron.com/our-businesses/oil-sands.

87\. Global Witness, “Chevron, Stop Funding Racism,” Global Witness, July 23, 2020, https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/oil-gas-and-mining/chevron-stop-funding-racism/.    

88\. Connell Smith, “Canaport LNG Pleads Guilty in Bird Kill Case,” CBC News, November 5, 2015, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/irving-canaport-bird-kill-plea-1.3305351\        

89\. Rachel Cave, “‘You Could See the Carnage Everywhere’: First Responder Remembers 2013 Bird Die-Off,” CBC News, Nov 12, 2019, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/bird-kill-canaport-lng-saint-john-2013-1.5353502\.    

90\. “Enforcement Notifications: Death of 7500 Migratory Birds Results in $750,000 Penalty to Canaport LNG Limited Partnership,” Government of Canada, November 24, 2015, https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/environmental-enforcement/notifications/death-migratory-birds-canaport-partnership.html.   

91\. “Repsol Completes Acquisition of Canaport LNG Terminal,” Europétrole, November 16, 2021, https://www.euro-petrole.com/repsol-completes-acquisition-of-canaport-lng-terminal-n-i-23017\. 

92\. Robert Jones, “Irving Made Millions Off Deal to Slash Taxes on LNG Property,” CBC News, June 12, 2015, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/irving-made-millions-off-deal-to-slash-taxes-on-lng-property-1.3111816\. 

93\. “Sponsorship Packages,” Beaverbrook Art Gallery, accessed June 13, 2022, https://beaverbrookartgallery.org/support/sponsorship/. 

94\. Richard Valdmanis, “Irving Oil Quietly Changed Climate Change Policy, Scrapping Plan to Cut Carbon Emissions,” Global News, December 20, 2019, https://globalnews.ca/news/6321681/irving-oil-carbon-emissions-cut/.

[^1]: “Our Story,” Business / Arts, http://www.businessandarts.org/our-story/. 

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Economy

Money

Colonialism

Critique

Maggie Flynn’s _Trickle Down_ visualizes a substantial network of impacts; years of research allow us to consider connections between corporations, art institutions, and Indigenous communities impacted by extractive intervention. 

Trickle Down

1\. P. Quinn, S. Zhang, Y. Xia, & X. Li, “Building the Terracotta Army: Ceramic Craft Technology and Organisation of Production at Qin Shihuang’s Mausoleum Complex,” _Antiquity_ 91, no. 358 (2017): 966–79. www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/building-the-terracot- ta-army-ceramic-craft-technology-and-organisation-of-production-at-qin-shihuangs-mausoleum-complex/5A47E970740549E6E A31D957EB014AD1

2\. See, for instance, ceramic production in Oaxaca, Mexico. Cf. Eric Mindling, _Fire and Clay: The Art of Oaxacan Pottery_ (Inovando la tradición/BOM DIA BOA TARD E BOA NOITE, 2019).

3\. Michel Dumont, “Clays,” _Canadian Minerals Yearbook_ (Natural Resources Canada, 2008).

4\. “Why We’re Called Mississauga,” accessed May 6, 2022, www.mississauga.ca/our-organization/about-our-organization/why-were-called-mississauga/

5\. Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, _Looking Back, While Moving Forward: Small Arms Inspection Building Redevelopment Project Brief_, August 6, 2014, www.ourcommons.ca/Content/ Committee/412/FINA/Web Doc/WD6615327/412_FINA_
PBC2014_Briefs/Toronto AndRegionConservation Authority-e.pdf

6\. “Memories of Small Arms Limited in Lakeview, Mississauga," YouTube video, 4:01, posted by "Heritage Mississauga,” August 25, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=r0lX7lgpS74 

7\. “Small Arms Inspection Building,” Arts and culture, Mississauga, accessed May 7, 2022, https://mississauga.ca/ arts-and-culture/locations/
small-arms-inspection-building/

8\. The Dish with One Spoon agreement is an Indigenous citizenship law made between Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe nations that consists of the three basic rules mentioned. There is a corresponding Haudenosaunee wampum belt that documents the agreement. Cf. Leanne Simpson, “Looking after Gdoo-naaganinaa: Precolonial Nishnaabeg Diplomatic and Treaty Relationships,” _Wicazo Sa Review_ 23, no. 2 (Fall 2008): 29–42.

9\. Dana Prieto, personal correspondence with the author, March 11, 2022.

10\. Clémentin Deliss, “Krista Belle Stewart: A Guest A Host A Ghost,” _New Viewings_, accessed May 7, 2022, https://newviewings.de/shows/new-viewings-32/krista-belle-stewart/

11\. This paragraph is indebted to Deliss’s conversation with Krista Belle Stewart. _ibid._

12\. This is not surprising, considering that Simon Fraser University also is home to the Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, named after the mining company of the same name who “gifted” $10 million to SFU in 2010. This was met by public outcry due to Goldcorp Inc.’s documented environmental and human rights abuses in Latin America. Cf. Rights Action, “Public Letter #2 - To Simon Fraser University Concerning Goldcorp Inc’s $10,000,000 ‘Gift,’” October 18, 2010, https://rightsaction. org/s/10-10-18GCDonation-SFURA-lt-SFU2.pdf

13\. Working Group on Mining and Human Rights in Latin America, “The Impact of Cana- dian Mining in Latin America and Canada’s Responsibility: Executive Summary of the Report Submitted to the Inter- American Commission on Human Rights,” accessed May 9, 2022, 4, www.dplf.org/sites/ default/files/report_canadian_ mining_executive_summary.pdf

14\. _Ibid._, 4.

15\. _Ibid._, 3.

16\. Defne Sunguroglu, “Complex Brick Assemblies,” _Architectural Design_ 78, no. 2 (2008): 65–66.

17\. As do other architectural traditions, such as the Arab muxarabis, a wooden facade that similarly allows the en- trance of sunlight and natural ventilation. Cf. Victor Delaqua, “Cobogós: A Brief History and Its Uses,” _ArchDaily_, July 6, 2017, www.archdaily.com/875130/cobogos-a-brief-history-and-its-uses

18\. Cf. Alexis Shotwell, _Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times_ (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016). Donna Haraway might also counsel us to stay with this trouble. Cf. Donna Haraway, _Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene_ (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016).

19\. Hidden Brain Media, “The Benefits of Mixed Emotions,” podcast, accessed May 10, 2022, https://hiddenbrain. org/podcast/the-benefits-of- mixed-emotions/

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Ceramics

Offering a sensuous movement through works by Dana Prieto, Bosco Sodi, Krista Belle Stewart, and Andrey Guaianá Zignnatto, Zoë Heyn-Jones considers how these artists “enable us to complicate our rudimentary understandings of extractivism.”

Cooked Earth: Ambivalence in Terracotta

Aamna Muzaffar collaborates on space, text, and moving image projects with artists and arts organizations as an independent creative director and technical supervisor. Based in Toronto, she is the Assistant Curator at Mercer Union, a centre for contemporary art.

###### Suneil Sanzgiri’s _Golden Jubilee_ (2021) is an abstract study of anti-colonial liberation struggles in Goa, India. It offers a sonic and visual journey through family history, local mythology, and the extractive legacy of the region. In the artist’s distinct aesthetic mode, the fragment is one articulation of the stakes in diasporic filmmaking—a storying _with_ rather than against incoherence and incongruity that allows us to question how we might conjure (and possibly recoup) histories without futures, with a generosity of mind and spirit.



**Aamna Muzaffar:** _Golden Jubilee_ is the most recent in a set of three films you’ve made since 2019; to start off, can you tell me about the way these works are situated within your practice and, thinking about the arc of this triad, what brought these stories together for you?

**Suneil Sanzgiri:** This series of works really began with one image, or rather screen-based experience, which actually opens up the first film in the trilogy called _At Home But Not At Home_ (2019). I had grown quite homesick for a place I had never even been to yet—Goa—but with which I have an ancestral connection. My uncles, aunties, and cousins who live there would often say to me, “You belong to Goa”—the first time I had heard those words, “you belong.”   

The primary image that you see at the beginning of the first film is of me navigating these strange 360-degree panoramic views of Goa in Google Maps, where bodies, faces, landscapes, vehicles, books, and the soil itself all become sutured together in this huddled mass. It’s almost grotesque but somehow articulated something that I hadn’t yet been able to find the vocabulary for. What I realized was that the image I was seeing was the camera’s inability to make sense of itself. It’s what happened when the camera, pointed at itself, attempted to hide, flee— creating an approximation of something “whole” out of disparate parts. This composite, combined with an excerpt from a Stuart Hall interview that I used as the audio in the opening scene, introduces questions around gaps, voids, and fragments within concepts of diaspora.

Essentially, these films collectively explore how screen-based technologies and circulations of image production affect our understanding of what it means to belong to a people. And my ancestral links to freedom fighters, shared histories of anti-colonial resistance. In light of the far-right regimes of ethno-nationalist violence that engulf so much suffering in South Asia, I ask how we might retrieve their histories. My work teases out the contradictions of past/present, state/ anti-state, colonizer/colonized—“heightening” them, as Cedric Robinson would say—to play out their dialectical tensions.

**AM:** Your father features heavily in all three films, becoming the conduit and measure of nearness to the memory, lore, and landscape that the films engage with. Can you talk about your relationship as collaborators and what his contribution to _Golden Jubilee_ brings to the film?

**SS:** By the time we started working on _Golden Jubilee_, we had already worked on two other films together within the span of a year. So, our interview style had become much more fluid. For this film, which had mostly already been filmed, including the 3D re-creations of my ancestral house, I mostly wanted my father to talk about his memories growing up there, navigating it virtually while he spoke. Most of the memories were quite banal as he was only a child, but one stuck out which was the story of the Devchar—commonly known as a Rakshasa, which is a “demonic” spirit. Interestingly, the root word Raksha means protection, yet a Rakshasa is thought of as a duplicitous being.

There are varying stories about the Devchar that may or may not line up with each other. My cousin had mentioned one such folk tale to me, saying that the villagers still heard Devchar walking around at night, recognizing him by the distinct rattle of his cane. My father remembered having an encounter with someone claiming to be this spirit when he was young. By the time I learned of this memory, I had already written a script for my father in his native language of Konkani in which he would loosely inhabit this figure of the Devchar, as if Devchar was a kind of purveyor of history.

There was a kind of double intention to asking my father to do the narration, the first being to continue the aesthetic and textural quality of his voice that carried the previous two films along, and the second was to actually hear him speak Konkani again. It was such a rare occasion growing up, and to hear it now was like music. It just flowed from him, although he admitted he was a bit rusty. Somehow that made it even more lyrical; the sort of sullen and patient way he speaks helped to really draw out the beauty of the Konkani language. People still come up to me after screenings or message me saying how meaningful it is to hear this specific regional language in an experimental film or art context—something that really is quite a rare occasion.

**AM:** I’m interested in your attention to language and its treatment throughout each of the films: as a visual device of pause and reflection using graphical intertitles, as speech acts that resist the amnesia encouraged by the colonial occupation of intangible culture, and as an extended citational practice of polyvocality. In many ways, these films unfold as an enfolding of these vectors. Can you share your process of developing a multilingual vision for these works?

**SS:** In Golden Jubilee, the use of Konkani was almost a selfish gesture. I knew that through the editing process I would pick up certain words or phrases just because of the repeated method of listening through editing. I think that diasporic people have a complex relationship to native languages, especially ones that are very difficult to learn outside of the areas they originated. Konkani is a dialect of Marathi which was always considered a bit more of a highbrow language because so many of the poets and writers used Marathi over the local Konkani language (named after the Konkan region in Coastal South West India). Post-independence, there was a huge rift between generations, with the younger generation fighting to make Konkani an official language of Goa and the older generation fighting to keep Marathi—which was more closely associated with the neighbouring Maharashtra—as the official language. The former wanted Goa to form its own unique identity, and even in my family, as my father describes in the film, this rift played out significantly.

I would say there was an intentional method of repair as well with the decision to include the Konkani language in this film. For my father, it was something he hadn’t done in a while—revisit his native language in a sort of poetic way of narrating histories of colonial theft and ruin. The intertitles are a method of adding my own voice to the mix while not actually recording any voice-over or narration. It’s a contrast meant to give added context or, in certain cases, directly address the viewer. Some of the text is meant to simply add dialectical tension as well, adding various readings of a given image or history.

In essence, the polyvocality—or what Edward Said might call the “contrapuntal reading”—is a method of complicating narratives of colonization and decoloniality, particularly in reference to today’s struggles. For example, often the tragedy of decolonization became another attempt to prove one’s value, competing with, or at times struggling to survive in spite of, the capitalist economy of the Global North—always playing “catch up,” so to speak. “History is full of what could have been,” says Hall, once again going back the first film in the trilogy.

**AM:** An extractive world is defutured by design. We know this from imperial conquests and colonial occupations past, and from those that continue today to engineer unliveable worlds ever more effectively. I’m struck by how _Golden Jubilee_ entangles the storying of two distinct but linked forms of extraction: mineral and blood, the material and the relational.

**SS:** I like your use of the idea of “blood” as relational as well as violent, the connotation being familial in the sense of being blood relatives, and the other being death. The word “extraction” can also connote notions of blood relation as well, or notions of ancestry, ethnicity, and race (such as so-and-so “was of South Asian extraction”). In thinking about the industrial history of Goa, mineral extraction has played a significant role in ideas of prosperity in the region, both during and since colonial rule, but as we hear in the film, it has also been a source of great damage to life. Many people got rich from mining in Goa, including some wealthy Goan families. Before the Portuguese came, there was an intricate system of communal land ownership called _gaunkari_ (which in Konkani means “those who make the village”) shepherded by the Indigenous Adivasi communities called _Gowda_ or _Gavddas_. All of Goa’s land and assets were collectively held by the community, being tilled jointly with earnings shared equally. While the Portuguese are said to have admired this system, referring to it as the “comunidades,” after independence in 1961 _gaunkari_ was ultimately abandoned in favour of private property, and land grabs ensued at the detriment of community and environment.

I’m reminded of a line in _Golden Jubilee_ where I ask about the overused terminology surrounding ideas of “mining the archive,” by asking, “Where does extraction follow us?” I think a lot about this with the term “found footage” too, which also seems to have somewhat colonial connotations. Did you really “find” something, or was it already somewhere and you’re just absorbing its value? I much prefer what Ariella Azoulay terms working archivally as being “co-conspirators through time.” Positioning oneself as working in a continuum is important to me. I think a lot of people mistake _Golden Jubilee_ as simply suggesting that the Portuguese colonists were solely responsible for all the problems that Goa faces today. Although of course Portugal extracted the land for hundreds of years to the benefit of their empire—particularly during the Salazar dictatorship and the overthrow of the monarchy—that’s certainly not the whole story. These relations had become so solidified that as one era of empire ushered in a newer and more “advanced” era of global capital, the old colonizer’s extraction of land was mimicked by new, neocolonial corporations that were now operated by regional people who looked like their neighbour instead of their colonizer.

For example, as I was researching this history in November 2020, the massive farmers protest and general strike in India (still considered the largest protest in human history) were happening. Their victories in 2021 were a rebuke of the neoliberal agricultural reforms that have been going on for decades but were heightened by Narendra Modi’s BJP regime. And at the same time this was going on, there was a movement by young artists in Goa against massive infrastructure and deforestation bills that would essentially cut through Goa’s rainforests— one of the world’s most biodiverse regions—to expand railroads and highways carrying coal and other raw minerals. This movement, called MyMollem, was largely successful, with the Goan government backing down, saving the rainforests—an astonishing accomplishment. These forests are 150 million years old—older than the Himalayas even! Land, labour, struggle, and time.

**AM:** This mineral and blood entanglement is woven together by another agent, a different layer of being and meaning that emerges in the form of a Devchar. This spirit, while tending to a locale, is itself without location—unaffected by the cruel adamance of physicality that binds both persons and matter to sites of emergence that in turn engender the possibility of their dislocation. In its persistence, and refusal to disappear, and as a _something where there should be nothing_ (following Mark Fisher), Devchar is cast as a defiant noble guide and witness. How did you decide to represent this spirit as a character and a mythos? And what might figuring the extra-mundane bring to imaginaries of history and the future concerned in your work?


**SS:** There is a complex history to this mythology, one which involves the demonization of Dalit and Adivasi communities. For centuries, well before even my ancestors had migrated to the region, the Goan Adivasi communities (Gowda, Velip, Kunbi) had worshiped the Devchar. When the Portuguese arrived in the 16th century to (among other things) indoctrinate the Goan people, they sought to recharacterize these spirits as embodiments of pure evil, which exacerbated divisions between Dalit and Adivasi communities and the upper caste. But it wasn’t just the Catholics that demonized the Devchar; the Hindus who migrated to the region also demonized this spirit as a form of caste-based oppression. So this is actually a fairly complex and layered history of migration; when writing _Golden Jubilee_, I was intrigued by the notion that tensions in these histories could be observed in the shifting identity of the Devchar. I became interested in the longue durée of this spirit, in its way-faring quality, and in how these ideas might intersect with the mythos of the “return home”—many workers and farmers claimed the spirit helped to guide them back when they were lost.

For my vision of bringing Devchar to the screen (“bringing to life,” one might say, following the Latin root of the word “animate”), I knew that he would need to have a sort of deformed, humanoid presence, sort of like how you can’t really discern faces in a dream—something that looked familiar, but you couldn’t really place it. There’s a scene with strange fog and pixels flying around where Devchar is walking through ruins of temples and churches, and you see these crumbled Portuguese statues of Saint Francis Xavier (who initiated the lesser-known Goan inquisition) and Vasco da Gama (the first seafaring European explorer to reach India).

When I was envisioning this sequence, I was thinking about the famous painting by Paul Klee titled _Angelus Novus_ (1920) that Walter Benjamin references as _Angel of History_ in “Theses on the Philosophy of History” (1940). The digital embodiment of Devchar speaks to my interest in understanding the _hauntology_ (going back to Fisher and drawing on Derrida) latent in digital images. In the process of attempting to sort through these lost futures, I wanted to use animation as a way to hopefully envision something new—something beyond our immediate perception, and by extension our capacity for imagining new futures and new worlds.

**AM:** Your films combine a number of media formats including digital and 16 mm footage, screen recordings, 3D rendered graphics, direct animation, and archival film, in a latticework of careful connections and buoyant speculations that bring to the screen impossible images, an unstable array of fragments. The last intertitle in _Golden Jubilee_ reads, “As if pulled back to earth, an image begins to tremble,” seconds before the film abruptly ends. Can you unpack that moment in the work and this notion of the image that gives way?

**SS:** The phrase is borrowed as a variation on a line from _A Grin Without a Cat_ (1977) by Chris Marker, “Why do images sometimes begin to tremble?” which is a way of articulating a common phenomenon when shooting handheld—and, in the context of Marker’s film more specifically, a question about moving images taken during volatile moments of protest or political struggle. The idea that it is somehow the image trembling and not the person holding the camera is quite beautiful, sort of mirroring the surrounding political instability with the instability of the image.

I think about that line a lot, and particularly in the context of the margins of film sequences that often get discarded or are thought of as “undesirable”—the beginnings or endings of a shot where quick and jerky movements occur as it is being established or stabilized. In the case of the last image of _Golden Jubilee_, where we see an image of four farmers and labourers lined up in a diagonal row disturbed by the camera abruptly tilting down, we have the sense that the image is somehow falling back down to the earth, or back to the land from which these questions of autonomy and self-determination emerge.

**AM:** Where language and image may grasp at specificity, the film’s score sounds the unspoken and creates space that cannot be contained by the frame. There, in the slippery darkness of erratic and irregular percussion, swells of wind instruments, and droning vocals, we oscillate between jazz, noise, and Carnatic sound. To close off, can you talk a bit about your vision for scoring the film and the collaborations that helped develop this aspect of the work?

**SS:** I’ve been working with Amirtha Kidambi in various capacities over the past three films. She’s an amazing musician, educator, and activist, and when we first met we immediately connected over shared politics and themes we were raising in our work. For this film, I asked if she and our mutual friend Booker Stardrum (who introduced us) would be interested in collaborating. Amirtha composed some of the themes for the music, and then she, Booker, and two other musicians named Angela Morris and Nathaniel Morgan played. Largely, Booker was responsible for the electronic manipulations of sounds; I would give him notes on the mood and theme. A lot of what Amirtha and I talked about were creating sounds of breath, which is related to this idea of _prana_ which is the life force that permeates all of the world around us. It used to be that one full breath (which would take around four seconds of time—as we now conceive it) was one moment or one second. So I was interested in having different breathing sounds through the instruments as relating to this idea of _prana_ and—sort of in the way the philosopher Henri Bergson (and Deleuze, by extension) would explore— the discrepancy between internal time or subjective time and external or mechanic time.


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History

Aamna Muzaffar interviews Suneil Sanzgiri on his latest film, _Golden Jubilee._ Grappling with Goa’s past as a Portuguese colony—subject to iron ore mining and cultural fracturing—the artist interrogates his instinct to learn more and challenges the “overused terminology surrounding [...] ‘mining the archive.’” 


Golden Jubilee: An interview with Suneil Sanzgiri

**Valérie Frappier** is a writer and curator of French settler ancestry from Aurora,  
Ont., currently based in what is now known as Toronto.

###### I first encountered Alana Bartol’s work in 2017 sighting an image of her in blue coveralls disguised as an oil and gas industry worker, levitating a branch above the ground in a desolate environment. As part of her _Orphan Well Adoption Agency_ (OWAA) (2017–ongoing) project, the artist performs as a dowser for the fictive agency, visiting orphaned oil and gas wells across so-called Alberta to read the ground’s levels of contamination while advocating for the public to symbolically adopt these neglected wells—which number in the thousands across the province.[^1]


I learned then that dowsing, also known as water witching or radiesthesia, is an embodied practice of divination long used to detect entities underfoot: water sources, mineral ores, oil, and even lost objects. Using an instrument—such as a forked branch, a pendulum, or alternatives— the practitioner locates the desired entity by being attentive to the chosen tool’s movements in response to asking yes and no questions while hovering it above the ground. Bartol descends from a long line of water witches on her mother’s side, adept at detecting sources of ground- water. After learning of this matrilineal history in 2013, the artist began incorporating the divination form into her art practice as a method with which to navigate her relationship to place and read sites of extraction, activating her body as a conduit to listen to what contaminated lands are saying.

Bartol initiated the OWAA project shortly after moving to Mohkínstsis/Calgary, as a way of engaging with the realities of failed remediation in the region. In a conversation surrounding the 2021 group exhibition “Groundwork” at Critical Distance Centre for Curators that featured works from the project, Bartol, alongside Ileana Hernandez Camacho, Tsēmā, and I, thought about the ways that land-based actions can challenge the colonial-capitalist mindset of extractivism[^2] and transmit site-specific dispatches from the land. Bartol explained that, as a white settler in so-called Canada, she sees dowsing and making art as connected practices of asking embodied questions to do so, querying: “How do [I and other settlers] actually relate to land, and how do we understand what it’s already communicating? How do we understand a relationship to land that is not just one-way [but] reciprocal?”[^3] In a video call with the artist this spring,[^4] she elaborated on how dowsing is her way of trying to comprehend—sensorially—how farreaching the contamination resulting from extraction on stolen Indigenous lands has spread, which informs her inquiries. She sees this work as being about undoing settler-colonial Western ways of thinking about the land as something that is owned, that one can take from without reciprocity.

Alongside her ongoing work around the oil and gas industry, Bartol brought these questions to consider the history of coal in the south-west of the province. Through a multipart project with the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery in 2020, she developed a new body of work around coal mining in Crowsnest Pass—located west of Lethbridge at the foot of the Rocky Mountains in Treaty 7 territory— which grew into the exhibition “Processes of Remediation: art, relationships, nature,” curated by Josephine Mills and presented at both the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery and at the Dunlop Art Gallery in 2021. While developing this work, Bartol maintained the blog dowsinganddigging.com, where she wrote and shared documentation about her on-site research. Coal mining was the reason for the formation of Crowsnest Pass and its lifeblood throughout the 20th century; today, there are numerous ghost towns and historical sites in the region, including memorials to those who lost their lives in some of the worst mining disasters in Canadian history.[^5] Although visitors to the Pass can visit interpretation centres and museums about the region’s history, Bartol explains during our call that “it’s acknowledged in this very odd kind of uncritical way… To say that this is a significant site, how do we really understand that significance, and how do we learn from it?” Digging beyond the narrative of compulsory extraction commemorated throughout the Pass, Bartol’s research over the spring and summer of 2020 entailed visiting abandoned mines not part of the visitors’ circuit “and essentially trespassing in them,” she recounts, to confront what seeps outside the state narrative. The resulting “Processes of Remediation” exhibition investigated what coal mining has meant for the land, water, and more-than-human species of this ecosystem while considering how this extractive legacy haunts our present.

A starting point to Bartol’s investigation into coal was the story of Martine de Bertereau, also known as the Baroness de Beausoleil. Born in the late 1500s, she was a French mining engineer and mineralogist—one of the first women recorded occupying this profession in France. Working alongside her husband at the service of France’s monarchy during the early to mid-1600s, they prospected for various mineral ores across Europe, including coal. What struck Bartol was that de Bertereau employed dowsing as one of her prospecting methods. Though the cause of her death is not known, we do know that she was eventually accused of witchcraft, which may have been linked to her use of divination, and that she died in prison. Drawn to the contradictions in de Bertereau’s story—that she was, on one hand, a pioneering woman, maybe a type of feminist, yet on the other hand, a mining pioneer—Bartol identified her as an “appropriate muse” given the artist’s reflections on the contradictions of her own position as a settler woman of mixed European ancestry investigating extractive capitalism while also entangled with and benefiting from it.

Bartol saw it fitting to conjure de Bertereau’s ghost through the contemporary figure of the witch, drawing on her implications in Western popular culture as both an empowering and a healing figure, yet also with monstrous or power-hungry propensities. The character is evoked through disembodied green hands with long red-lacquer nails—referencing the famed Wicked Witch of the West from _The Wizard of Oz_—in select recent works. Bartol perceives the witch figure today “as a symbol that counters patriarchal power and maybe capitalism, but […] gets co-opted by that in many ways.” Interestingly, the story of the witch is implicit to capitalism. Regarding the formation of capitalism fuelled by colonization of the Americas and the transatlantic slave trade, Italian feminist Silvia Federici expounds how witch-hunts— which were at their peak during de Bertereau’s era—were instrumental to severing the peasantry from the lands they worked in Europe and assailing women’s social power. Resuscitating the ghost of de Bertereau through the witch, then, alludes to these complex histories and asks questions about the system that gave rise to coal mining in the context of a province where it remains not only active but proactive.

Throughout the exhibition, the witch mediates these coiled contradictions through the figure’s archetypes: how we fall prey to systems of power (the “bad witch”) yet how we also have the ability to heal by rebuilding our connection to the natural world (the “good witch”). For instance, in the sculptural installation _Coal Futures_ (2021), a series of Bartol-as-the-witch’s green-painted cast hands levitate over chunks of coal, petroleum coke, and a core sample—almost as if guarding them—while each hand balances a dowsing rod. In this, the witch nods to the paradox of our present, clutching to exploitative processes we know have killed and are contaminating us. Meanwhile, in the installation _Rotten Pot_ (2021)—translated from the French _pot-pourri_—introduced plants harvested from the Pass hang to dry while others are gathered into a large copper cauldron, implying their use in medicinal remedies.

The witch’s work with these contradictions extends through the 10-minute video _With a finger to her lips…_ (2021), which includes footage from the abandoned Greenhill Mine Complex that closed in the late ’50s. Green hands emerge from the ground to reckon with the remnants of coal mining. “There was a sense that I didn’t need the dowsing tools when I embodied the hands [there],” describes Bartol. “It was very much an intuitive performance in the spaces I was in, and seeing what came out of my hand acting.” The hands crawl through and sensuously caress the infrastructure and leftover materials, including discarded core samples from the nearby Grassy Mountain. In one scene, a stream flows past a heap of core samples, followed by a close-up of the witch’s hand pointing toward mysterious white strands flowing in the water, which suggest the silent contamination of the Oldman Watershed (upon which the Pass sits) by an old underground mine.

While investigating the impacts of the coal industry on the region, questions about the present and futures of coal quickly turned relevant. On one of her visits to the Greenhill site that summer, Bartol stumbled upon the road leading to the proposed site of the Grassy Mountain Coal Project: an open-pit metallurgical coal mine backed by Australian-owned Benga Mining Limited, and which was under review by a joint panel formed between Canada’s environment minister and the Alberta Energy Regulator at the time. If approved, the project promised to produce 4.5 million tonnes of coal annually over a period of 25 years. In the past, coal mining mostly took place underground, but in recent decades, invasive open-pit mines on top of mountains have become commonplace. With the failures to remediate past mining ever-present in the land and waters, Bartol thought about what such a project would mean for the Oldman Watershed. “You can’t restore soil after you remove it. You can’t restore a mountain after you literally take the top off it. And you’re not going to restore the vegetation. You’re not going to restore all the complexity of that landscape.” What’s more, just a few weeks prior that spring, the United Conservative Party of Alberta had revoked a 1976 Coal Policy that banned open-pit coal mining in parts of the Rockies region of the province.

Through her blog writing and in the exhibition at the University of Lethbridge, Bartol offered educational entry points to the proposed Grassy Mountain project, inviting visitors to consider the future of coal in the region. Within the installation were QR codes that linked to the websites of activist groups and reading material about the proposed open-pit mine, amplifying the fight. Thanks to the tireless activism and educational campaigns of many organizations and community members—including the significant leadership of the Niitsítapi Water Protectors, a grassroots collective from the Blackfoot Confederacy on whose traditional and treaty lands the project was being proposed, as well as Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society’s Southern Alberta Chapter and the Livingstone Landowners Group—the proposal was successfully denied in June 2021. Cries for the urgent elimination of coal as a fossil fuel and in steel-making operations continue to be voiced. Although the 1976 Coal Policy was reinstated in February 2021 following mounting public disapproval, the relative ease with which it came down remains a concern for areas like Crowsnest Pass and the communities who live within their watersheds.

To further resist the symbols of death found throughout the Pass as well as the settler-colonial narrative that sacrifice zones are endemic for human economies to function, Bartol, like the activist groups, turned her attention to the region’s ecosystem and its life forms. Plants teach us many things about countering extraction, perhaps most importantly how to be in relationship— the first step of remediation. In learning about how profoundly the grasslands ecology of the Pass has been disrupted, Bartol noted that native plants grew sparsely at the sites. She enlisted Latifa Pelletier-Ahmed—an artist, botanist, herbalist, and co-owner of ALCLA Native Plants in so-called Calgary with whom Bartol collaborates to create educational plant walks in the city—and the two created _Seeds for Grassy Mountain_ (2020–ongoing) to encourage the restoration of these native species. The project assembled over 400 wild-collected seeds of plants native to the Grassy Mountain region, or historically known to grow there, into packets for the exhibition’s visitors to take away and plant. Packets with different pairings of fireweed, fringed sage, meadowsweet, paintbrush, prickly wild rose, Rocky Mountain fescue, silky and silvery lupine, yarrow, and more were presented in a coal core storage box from the Green-hill Complex marked “GM” for Grassy Mountain, repurposed here as a vessel for renewal. The artists hoped the seeds would help exhibition visitors “to create a connection to Grassy Mountain and think about how we can connect with damaged landscapes.”[^6] The project also became a way for both collaborators to do so, building relationships with these native plants and learning from each other’s knowledge of them.

Bartol’s interactions with introduced plant species during her fieldwork— which (unlike native plants) thrived at the abandoned mines—also taught her about the work of remediation. She particularly noticed the presence of mullein in the Pass, their tall flowered rod at times literally growing from coal slag. As with de Bertereau and the witch, the story of mullein abounds in contradictions. Introduced to North America by way of European settlers, the plant has had many uses in recent centuries—including as a torch for miners underground, as a fish poison, and as a medicine for human ailments. What intrigued Bartol most by mullein’s growth at the sites was their potential role as phytoremediators there—a theory supported by scientific studies about mullein’s capacities to heal the soil as a hyperaccumulator of heavy metals.[^7] Enthralled by the notion “that plants can extract contaminants from soil”—literally countering extraction— she wondered to what degree the plant was contributing to remediation. In the three-minute video titled after one of mullein’s many names, _Hag’s Taper_ (2020), the witch’s hand holds a dried torch burning in the darkness. While perhaps performing as the deliverer of a foreign species that threatens to disrupt an ecosystem, the witch may also be ritually honouring those who lost their lives in the Pass, or incanting a spell summoning the plant’s power to help heal the land’s extractive wounds.

When I ask Bartol what remediation means to her, she brings it back to relationship-building and an ethic of reciprocity. “In order to restore, remediate, it’s all about understanding that we are in a biodiverse world [and that] we are all constantly in relation with everything around us.” In more recent projects that broke ground during the pandemic, Bartol fortifies her collaborations to do this work. In _Remediation Room_ (2021–2022), she took on a curatorial role to bring together the work of six artists[^8] who proposed remediation strategies from within the province to jointly counter the Alberta government’s Canadian Energy Centre campaign (referred to as the Energy War Room) that aggressively promotes rampant extraction. And, as a member of the Fathom Sounds collective,[^9] Bartol contributes to the group’s ongoing research about human relationships with endangered watersheds in so-called British Columbia and their shared reflections on the vitality of water. Overall, Bartol’s understanding of collaboration is expansive, and it’s not just humans that inform the work, but the plants, the sites, and also the dead. Practicing dowsing not as a search for the potential of extraction, Bartol uses it to ask questions with her collaborators in pursuit of agents of remediation. When you take heed, listening with your whole body, you start to notice that their influence can be felt all around us.

[^1]: In the industry, a well becomes orphaned when the company who owns it goes bankrupt and cannot take care of its reclamation and remediation.
[^2]: The starting point to discussing alternatives to extractivism in this exhibition was Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s definition of it being “deep reciprocity. It’s respect, it’s relationship, it’s responsibility, and it’s local,” in Naomi Klein, “Dancing the World into Being: A Conversation with Idle No More’s Leanne Simpson,” _YES! Magazine_, March 6, 2013, https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2013/03/06/dancing-the-world-into-being-a-conversation-with-idle-no-more-leanne-simpson
[^3]:“Groundworking: A conversation with Alana Bartol, Ileana Hernandez Camacho, and Tsēmā, moderated by Valérie Frappier,” March 15, 2021, https://criticaldistance.ca/assets/2021/07/Groundwork_Conversation-with-Artists.pdf
[^5]: Alana Bartol, video call with author, April 7, 2022. Unattributed insights that follow from here on, which are attributed to Bartol, are from this conversation.
[^6]: These include the 1903 Frank Slide, where a landslide buried part of the Frank mining town, killing over 90 people, as well as the 1914 Hillcrest Mine Disaster, caused by an underground explosion which killed 189 of the workers in the mine.
[^7]: Alana Bartol, “Seeds for Grassy Mountain,” _Dowsing and Digging_ (blog), www.dowsinganddigging.com/post/seeds-for-grassy-mountain
[^8]: Alana Bartol, “Greenhill Mining Complex: ‘It’s Yours’ | Part 2,” www.dowsinganddig ging.com/post/greenhill-min ing-complex-it-s-yours-part-2 
[^9]: Christina Battle, Tamara Lee-Anne Cardinal, Rita McKeough, Nurgül Rodriguez, and Mia Rushton and Eric Moschopedis.
[^10]:The collective is composed of artists Kat G Morris, Genevieve Robertson, Nancy Tam, and Jay White, along with Bartol.

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Government

Valérie Frappier profiles Alana Bartol, whose recent work has explored the obfuscating nature of state and corporate communication around extractive sites. Having visited abandoned mines, ghost towns, visitor interpretation centres, museums, and sites proposed for new developments in Southern Alberta, Bartol seeks to ensure that harm remains legible in narratives around settler-colonial extraction.

Dowsing for Remediation, with Alana Bartol

Lauren Fournier is a writer, artist, and curator. Her book _Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing, and Criticism_ is forthcoming through The MIT Press (2021).

I was struck by a scene in the new HBO series _Tokyo Vice_ (2022) when Samantha, the blonde American woman who is living and working in Tokyo, confrontationally asks Jake Adelstein, the Jewish male protagonist and real-life author of the memoir on which this show is based: “Do I look like a prostitute to you?” The subtext is whether she is the “kind of person” who would be a prostitute— who has the “look,” whatever that “look” might be. After all, the work she does exists in blurry proximity to sex work: she is a “hostess” at a club where men pay for women to sit with them and talk. Men pay “by the bottle” for the woman’s time. In her introductory scene, she croons Japanese karaoke songs in a glamorous halter dress, men at tables gazing with desire.

Samantha’s question is a response to Jake asking whether she does sex work. The subtext is that Samantha’s answer will determine whether or not Jake can be interested in her, romantically. When I watched Samantha recoil at the suggestion, I was disappointed but also not particularly surprised. After all, the stigma against sex work and sex workers continues to be startlingly present in popular culture, and normalized in these casual ways. This young, beautiful, white woman must retain her purity in the eyes of the show’s presumably anti–sex work gaze, even if she is being paid to flirt with men: she cannot be a legitimate love interest to the show’s straight, white, male protagonist if she exchanges the physical act of sex for money. If she were to cross that line, she would become a different type of person, one seen by viewers— who see the show through Jake’s eyes— as less worthy of love, value, and respect.

Sex workers are often represented in cultural production, but rarely on their own terms. Take, for example, the recent blockbuster exhibition “Picasso: Painting the Blue Period” at the Art Gallery of Ontario (6 October 2021 to 4 January 2022), curated by Kenneth Brummel and Dr Susan Behrends Frank. As I walked through the show, a seemingly incidental curatorial theme seemed to emerge: Picasso’s representations of women from the supposedly sordid underbelly of society (a long-standing fixation of the French male modernists), including sex workers and, somewhat conflated, women who had been institutionalized in asylum-hospitals like Saint-Lazare. The exhibition didactics were laden with questionable assumptions about women who engage in sex work, including them being downtrodden and in need of representational rescue by Picasso (a tired narrative).[^1] I looked at one painting of a woman who looked uncomfortable, like he is trying to cover herself with a nearby fabric, but not in a titillating way. This was of a “brothel worker,” the description read, whose face gazed “coyly.” Really? I looked back at the figure’s face; it was many things, but coy wasn’t one.

In early 2022, the London ICA’s “Decriminalised Futures” (16 February to 22 May 2022) emerged as a space for sex workers and their allies to represent themselves with embodied assertion and complex honesty. The artists, primarily from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France, represent their experiences through a range of artistic forms, including audio, installation, sculpture, text/wall vinyl, performance, and film. The exhibition pushes back against decades, even centuries, of pre-modern, modern, and even contemporary art history where non-sex workers have represented sex workers in their art. This show is not the first to show work by artists who are also sex workers, but it is the first major exhibition of contemporary art where the work itself is informed by lived experience in the industry, and where the focus is on futurity and what a future of decriminalization could look like.

Curated by Yves Sanglante and Elio Sea, in collaboration with the Sex Worker Advocacy and Resistance Movement, the exhibition features work by 13 artists who keep an eye to the histories of sex workers rights movements and their fights for social and racial justice. By centring decriminalization in its title, the exhibition aligns itself with decades of activism and brings awareness to an ongoing, urgent issue of the criminalization of sex work in countries around the world. If sex work is decriminalized, the movement’s logic goes, then sex workers will not be subjected to the same degree of economic extraction and threats of physical violence, and will be able to do their chosen form of work with more agency and safety.

The alternatives, criminalization and legalization, both uniquely fail sex workers. Proponents of decriminalization who oppose legalization explain that legalization will create an economy in which sex workers continue to be economically exploited, not unlike what has happened with the legalization of pot in Canada and parts of the US, wherein, for example, communities who were disproportionately criminalized when pot was illegal can’t economically thrive with pot legalization. Legalization can lead to monopoly, heavy regulation, and inflated prices. Decriminalization, on the other hand, could allow sex workers to engage in their work with self- determination, without the risks of being put into jail or otherwise violated (by clients, by police officers, by others) that occur when doing their work illegally, in hiding.

What makes local exhibitions that reduce or oversimplify the reality of sex workers’ lives, like the AGO’s Picasso show, all the more harmful is the fact that sex work continues to be criminalized in Canada. “Canada’s sex work laws are harming the people they were designed to protect,”[^2] writes Kai Cheng Thom, one of the most vocal proponents of decriminalization of sex work and prostitution in Canada today. Noting that sex work decriminalization continues to be “one of society’s most controversial issues,” Thom pushes strongly against the view that current laws in Canada protect sex workers; the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act (PCEPA) has been in place since 2014, when it replaced the anti-sex work provisions in the Criminal Code. Importantly, despite the rebranding, the PCEPA still effectively criminalizes sex work by criminalizing the purchasing of sex work and any third-party activities involved in sex work, like advertising; this only pushes sex work further into the shadows, keeping sex workers at risk of violence and exploitation.

Thom focuses on the issue of the decriminalization of sex work from the perspective of both human rights and labour conditions, noting that, statistically, sex workers are often women and LGBT people from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds who are using
“their bodies and brains to achieve a middle class standard of living—an opportunity that might have otherwise been denied to them.” She goes on to argue that the right to make money in the way that they want to, granted that only consenting adults are involved and no one is being harmed, ought to be a human right.[^3] Others in Canada who are calling for the decriminalization of sex work include the Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform, comprising 25 groups that work with sex workers and publish resources such as advocacy guides, law-reform recommendations, and info-sheets that outline the impacts of the PCEPA.

With “Decriminalised Futures,” the exhibition’s curators make sure that the artists are setting out their own terms. One element of the safety measures taken was care around not disclosing each artist’s relationship to sex work unless the artist has publicly self-identified as being engaged in it; and so, they do not say that the exhibition includes only artists with lived experience. When I inquired about this, the gallery staff responded, “Decriminalised Futures is/was a group exhibition featuring thirteen international artists whose work speaks to the multiplicity of contemporary sex worker experiences. We cannot confirm the lived experiences of these artists further.”

This differs from the stance taken by the recent Canadian project _Hustling Verse: An Anthology of Sex Workers’ Poetry_ (2019), edited by Vancouver-based poets/ artists/writers Amber Dawn and Justin Ducharme, which is a collection of sex worker-authored poetry written by 50 “self-identified sex workers from all walks of the industry (survival and trade, past and present).”[^4] The exhibition at the ICA also does well to home in on sex work specifically, drawing a line between sex work and human trafficking (which is non-consensual by definition)—
a conflation that’s all too common in mainstream media, which perpetuates sensationalist and polarizing ideas.

Unsurprisingly, many of the practices behind the works in this exhibition are activist in addition to being artistic, and extend out to literary practices too. For example, Danica Uskert’s and Annie Mok’s _Unsustainable_ (2020) is a graphic novel commissioned specifically for this exhibition that tells the story of a cam girl and BDSM sex worker; displayed as print copies on an encircling plinth, the book looks at sex work with an ambivalence that is not unlike all labour under capitalism—there is some choice there, but there is also constraint. The novel is difficult to read for those with experiences of sexual violence, but it succeeds in grounding sex work in real-life stories told from complex, first-person, human perspectives. I see the return to text throughout the show as a way of underlining the imperative to communicate clearly when seeking to achieve certain activist aims.

Different rooms in the exhibition show different tonal approaches to sex work, each affirming in its own way. In Tobi Adebajo’s installation _eje_ (2022), the room is awash in red light, with small rooms further sectioned off with curtains, and bass pumping through the space: you feel as though you might be in a strip club or another sex work/sex work-adjacent space. On one of the three screens in the three-channel video, not sectioned off by curtains, are the words “Eat the rich” overlaid on a figure wearing a knee pad. While the knee pad might look out of place to some viewers—a protective item typically worn by athletes like soccer players—strippers often wear knee pads when they are practicing, but not when they are performing, to mitigate the physical toll the activity takes on the body. In Adebajo’s collage triptych _exploring the oldest industry…_ (2022), “healing” is placed next to “whore,” and then next to the repeated “work, work, work, work, work,” as part of the show’s larger call for safe and humane, even comfortable, conditions for sex work as a form of labour.

Just as there is labour, there is also space for rest. Artist/stripper/DJ/dominatrix and queer Pakistani Egyptian artist Aisha Mirza’s mixed-media installation creates a nourishing abode. The installation includes supple plants and a vinyl text that reads, pithy and friendly, like its own single-lined poem: “the best dick i ever had was a thumb & good intentions.” As you look closer, you see that this text might be the title of a story, which is written out in the first person as “details from a dream,” beneath a large vinyl portrait photograph of a Black woman wearing black stilettos with her legs crossed, face up on a bed, obscured by the double-exposed photograph of trees streaming with light. Within the installation itself, natural light pours in through the windows and onto the photo too. There are cozy pink and blue rugs and pillows, reading materials, and an assortment of kink and dominatrix-related accessories, like collars and whips. Across from the anchoring photograph, there is a mirror where viewers may look at themselves while they read the text above: “I am a dominatrix, or, I believe you completely.”

In addition to the exhibition in the galleries proper, “Decriminalised Futures” includes a screening of three sex worker- made films from Brazil, Thailand, and Germany, which are available for viewers outside of London to screen online. The films make good use of humour—a dark, irreverent humour—as a way of bringing comic relief to seriously considered, somber issues. _Last Rescue in Siam (สาวน้อยผจญภัย)_ (2012) was made by the Empower Foundation, which “was established in 1984 in Thailand to offer community education and lobby the government for better sex work laws and labour rights.”[^5] The foundation uses art and other forms of media to do this, and _Last Rescue_ directly takes up the effects of anti-trafficking raids on sex workers there. The short film is shot as a black-and-white silent of the Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin variety, replete with ragtime music. The Thai women sex workers perform the Chaplin-esque roles for the camera, including the male roles (police and johns); through the performances and intertitles, they show a raid taking place in a brothel. Slapstick and didactics become a novel way of teaching viewers about a serious issue with comic relief.

Alongside these films, which are all subtitled (_Last Rescue_ in both English and Thai), and other artworks that use text or writing, the curators also make use of text on the walls in the form of quotes by artists and theorists, like Jade Bentil from their _Imagining Feminist Futures_, written in teal: “I struggle with this idea of people being voiceless or not able to articulate; people are articulating their experiences at all times, it’s on us to listen and prioritise those voices.” Literary arts are also featured in the exhibition’s adjacent programming. Alongside the call to decriminalize sex work, the London ICA was smart to include similar political movements as part of an effort toward solidarity and alliance-building, and critiques of prisons and police. This was the focus of the poetry night Exaggerated Claims: Power and Pleasure in Poetry, which featured online performances from six writers who imagine forms of self-organization outside of the carceral state; the roster included Mercedes Eng, a Vancouver-based poet who has long been engaging these issues in her work. She reads her poem “In dreams,” which opens: “The duress / the mess / it doesn’t belong to the ladies and their people / instead / the duress / the fear / is yours.” It feels like she is looking directly through me, the viewer, whoever is out there listening, as she reads into the camera of her laptop with a shaking, solemn certitude. It is a moment of calling in, it seems to me, where the viewers at home reflect on their own possible complicity in these systems that continue to be harmful for women and queers in sex work. Such a move could be said to extend to the larger exhibition, too.

Other programming included a life drawing class with the East London Strippers Collective that sold out immediately; in the sessions, held in person, one of the strippers from the collective would pose on a pole. In this way, living, breathing people who work in sex work or related industries, like stripping, were physically there in a space with viewers/ visitors/artists/art students, who spent time looking at their bodies with a certain care and attention (here, as people drawing to the best of their ability/practicing their craft). This programming choice seems to be an effective way to start to destigmatize sex work by bringing people who may not have had encounters with sex workers previously into close and sustained contact with a stripper and/or sex worker—here, in the “non-sexual” encounter of life drawing.

Despite the diversity of approaches, the show is simultaneously cacophonous and a bit single note: a quote from an anonymized sex worker named Rori in the talk “Bodies, Visibility, and Violence”[^6] in vinyl on the wall as a kind of kin-citation is the takeaway us audiences are reminded of throughout: “If we don’t make this art about our experiences, other people are going to do it.” Given the exhibition’s bold ambition of calling for “full decriminalisation of sex work… across the world,”[^7] at a time when so many sex workers across global borders and in “developed countries” like Canada continue to experience criminalization, violence, and a lack of rights, I believe this requires repeating. When we listen to sex workers with lived experience in the industries, what we often hear—as we do in this exhibition—is that decriminalization is the best option for their physical, emotional, and economic well-being.

The ICA London has a long history of supporting transgression, taboo, and the margins in terms of which artists it features and what kinds of exhibition thematics it pursues. As I consider this show in 2022, I consider too how an institution like the ICA serves as a legitimating frame that provides protection for those included within it by enclosing them, for a period of time, in the safety of the white cube. What happens when the exhibition ends—what happens to the artists, to the artworks, to the ideas, to the calls to action, to the unique kinds of outreach programming, to the relationships fostered—is something that one needs to ask, particularly when an exhibition involves any sort of activism or engagement with a community outside of “the contemporary art world” (as if this world does not already intersect with so much outside of it). As Mirza put it: “If bring- ing an ancient facet of life as reviled as sex work to a space of ‘high art’ (and in my opinion, sex work is the highest form of art) can help initiate conversations about the rights of _all_ people to be supported in _all_ work, then good. If it can quieten the hypocrisy and bigotry which normally surrounds conversations around sex work, then even better.”[^8]

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Lauren Gabrielle Fournier explores a London ICA exhibition on the decriminalization of sex work. Curated by Yves Sanglante and Elio Sea, with the Sex Worker Advocacy and Resistance Movement, 13 international artists “whose work speaks to the multiplicity of contemporary sex work experience” bolster this judicial conversation, which Fournier connects to Canada’s current laws.

Dreaming of Decriminalization

Letter

##### Dear C,

Grief is natural, and yet there are communities that experience death-related grief as an exceptional, persistent phenomenon. This is made plain in Nya Lewis’s discussion of an inheritance by Kosisochukwu Nnebe, and in Rana Nazzal Hamadeh’s essay, “The Impulse to Share Evidence: Tensions in Representing the Unity Uprising.” Both writers are examining ideas that I am continuously trying to wrestle with as a Black grieving mother whose son was killed in his 17th year of life. In particular, they examine ideas around: resilience when there hasn’t been a reckoning against the conditions that produced the grieving circumstances in the first place, the demand for evidence, and who gets to grieve.

I have grown wary of calls for “proof,” because as history has demonstrated, there will never be enough evidence to satiate those that view themselves as outside of the threshold of harm. In thinking about the recent attacks on Black and Latine communities in Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas, I have read calls for families to show the bodies of their dead loved ones as evidence. I resent the idea that reasonable people require this degree of proof, or for others to make a spectacle of their grief in order to recognize the conditions that created it. As Tina Campt stated in her BOMB essay “The Opacity of Grief,” “I need not inhabit their grief to feel across and connect to it.” I also think of Audre Lorde’s use of the phrase “sensation without feeling” in her discussion of the erotic versus pornography, and how that phrase might inform our understanding of what has been referred to as “trauma porn.”

These calls for proof often cite the 1955 murder of Emmitt Till and his mother’s decision to have an open casket as part of her pursuit of justice. In a 1956 interview with Ethel Payne of the Chicago Defender, Mamie Till said that she made the decision after a presence visited her and told her that she should “have courage and faith \[…\] and there will be redemption for the sufferings of your people \[…\] tell the story so the truth will arouse men’s consciences.” Till’s killers would later be acquitted.

These days, I am holding on to how we remain seen to each other in our grief in a world that would just as soon disappear us then turn our absence into a spectacle.

##### Julia Mallory

##### Dear C Magazine,

Grief is a universal, nuanced, and distinct subject. I was really taken with the conversation “Relevant Permission” between artists Michèle Pearson Clarke and Lou Sheppard from your last issue. As the artists discussed how they chose to reject pressure to “fit their stories into a metanarrative of marginalization,” I was inspired by what they describe as “doing differently.” Notably, I am drawn to their concept of exploring the “wildness” of subjects, particularly one as abstruse as grief.

I also think of how the exhibition “it comes in waves” (2022), curated by Amy Ash, also considered the “nature of absence,” and even included work by Lou Sheppard. One work from that show, Lan Florence Yee’s _A Legacy of Ethnography_ (2021), was unnerving in a way that I find difficult to describe. It featured a photo of two young children printed onto cotton voile. The children are facing each other while holding hands (perhaps dancing), and the words “what do we lose when we describe ourselves” are hand-embroidered into the image in a statement that feels somehow both airy and intrusive. I think that to wild a subject is perhaps the opposite of describing it. To wild is to explore the indescribable and porous spaces of our lives— those where value actually resides.

In a statement for her show, Ash noted “a conversation about loss or grief is equally a conversation about what we value.” Returning to Clarke and Sheppard’s concept of exploring the “wildness” in their subjects, Ash’s exploration of “value” feels equally wild. The former speaks of holding “grief and joy in the same hand,” which is wild. All of the artists I’ve also mentioned seem to chase a clarity that is both vital, and somehow like clutching smoke. The ability to express that unnamable nugget, which is at the centre of whatever we value, demands an acuity that, as Ash seems to suggest, only ever comes in waves….

Thank you again.

##### Danielle Hogan

##### Dear C,

I know grief to be an untouchable crushing absence, and a painfully beautiful, poignant reason to give form. In “Grief Has No Distance,” April Thompson asks if grief has a shape. If it does, can it be shaped by an artist’s hand? Lou Sheppard continues this line of thought in “Relevant Permission” when he asks, “what does it mean to see through grief?” Artists in this issue are preoccupied with grief’s scent, image, and somatic manifestations. Thompson finds understanding in photographs from the past, while Sheppard uses queer frameworks to make sense of loss. They know that though grief can be wielded, ultimately, it cannot be held in the palm of one’s hand.

All the best,

##### Madeleine Randmaa

issue-152-p12-13.pdf

Letters reflecting on issue 151 “Grief.”

Letters

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Editor

Maandeeq Mohamed is a writer and researcher. Engaging Black Studies and related cultural production, her writing is featured in _Real Life_, _C Magazine_, and _Canadian Art_. 

Reviews Editor

Designer

Publisher

Artist Project

nicole kelly westman is of Métis and Icelandic descent and lives with the chaotic pleasures of a dyslexic mind; she is surrounded in support by the interconnected care and plurality of her community. She is most delighted to be an Aunty but is also an artist who, these days, is mostly on hiatus.

On the first page of this issue, Soloman Chiniquay shows a ’70s-era mattress, resting upon a Forest Service Road, lit by the high contrast of midday sun, with a haphazardly folded piece of fabric interrupting a bold red text proclaiming “STOP.” Many Indigenous folks have an embodied understanding of the longstanding history of the government denying sovereign Nations their right to self-determination. Transcending linear time while fighting on the front lines, Indigenous activists portal through resistance movements of the ’90s like the Oka Crisis (1990), the War in the Woods (1993), and the Gustafsen Lake Standoff (1995). All of those resistances were met with intense militarized response. Before the RCMP, there was the North West Mounted Police, who were established in 1870 to control Indigenous people as the “possession” of this land was transferred from the Hudson’s Bay Company to Canada. Within 15 years of being established, the police would wage a war against Louis Riel’s Rebellion in 1885, after he seized Batoche. The police’s immiseration of Indigenous people is seeded into this nation’s foundation.

The Ada’itsx/Fairy Creek Blockade, which started in the summer of 2020 and seeks to protect the many old-growth trees that meet British Columbia’s regulated threshold of being a minimum of 250 years old,[^1] has been no different. This action of civil unrest, now the most long- standing in this country, is situated in the _ḥahahuułi_ which have been tended to by the Ditidaht, Huu-ay-aht, and Pacheedaht peoples \[2\] who have harvested in respectful, considerate, and reciprocal ways for as long as can be remembered. This knowledge is now guided by elders and cultural keepers who abide by the ancestral protocols of the _nism̓ a_. This watershed is entirely intact, but under threat by private timber harvesting and lumber manufacturing company Teal-Jones, leading to immense outcry from many who have gone on to volunteer their time to protect this sacred forest— these Douglas firs, western red cedars, and Sitka spruces—which in turn protects us from an increasingly unwieldy climate.

Chiniquay is a photographer and filmmaker living between xʷməθkʷəy̓ əm, Sḵwx̱ wú7mesh, and səl̓ ilwətaɁɬ territories and his Îyârhe Nakoda homelands in Treaty 7 territory. He’s a founding member of The Stoney Nakoda AV Club, now known as the Nakoda AV Club, which is described as a “storytelling society, an arts collective, and a group of emerging and established artists \[… who\] follow the guidance of Elders, and of \[their\] own hearts.”[^3] The artist has an energy like that of an older cousin, one that uses gentle teasing as their methodology for teaching, a strong stark silence to convey disappointment, a squinched eyebrow as a rebuttal to youthful ridicule, and a consistent thoughtfulness that reminds young folks of their worthiness. In the summer of 2021, he stood among many others braced in refusal against the impending colossal disruption of Ada’itsx and collected photographs on these front lines, foregrounded with ethics of empathy.

In the late 1800s, the eradication of the plains bison was debilitating for Îyârhe Nakoda, who have always been culturally and spiritually tethered to these bovines. \[4\] Chiniquay tells me of a sun-faded newspaper clipping found in his grandmother’s home with the heading “Who Are We Without the Buffalo?” collaboratively authored by several elders many decades ago. The weight of this question was enough to embolden him to fight alongside Indigenous resisters defending their territories against this century’s capitalistic ultimatums. A foreboding, imminent threat of destruction runs through this series. It seems to surrender to sorrow—or maybe to a sentiment somewhat sweet in its attempt to encapsulate that which once was and is still being fought for. In chorus, these images provide a tonal synopsis of grief—potential, assumed, and actual— subsumed in the body from witnessing the shameless looting of sacred land.

Many photographers and photojournalists act like hunters, focused on finding an image that precisely encapsulates complexities that are too challenging to succinctly summarize. Chiniquay actively works against this stylistic lineage, consciously prioritizing the peripheries as opposed to capturing sensationalized scenes of combative conflict. He forwent the privileges tethered to a press pass in favour of embracing a fullness of presence on the front lines and, with technical diligence, maintains the anonymity of fellow activists. His choice not to capture “decisive moments” reveals to us, in a delicate way, a set of boundaries that are considerately navigated. After all, not everything is for the taking.

On pages two and four, misty clouds caress coniferous treetops cascading down hillsides scarred by cut back roads. Splintered wood in an orange hue suggests conifers’ death, and expansive bald patches in various states of reclamation “heal” over in a blanketed blur of industrially planted monocrop commodities. Each tree is on layaway living as a voucher for future profits. These are not photographs that speak a thousand words, but rather, they whisper tangents of billowing thought, interlaced with nuance. Just outside each frame hovers a murky doom lingering alongside the heavy machinery, deployed to satisfy Teal-Jones’s bottom lines. We can nearly hear the roaring engines revved up by the cohort of labourers barraging the watershed and its interdependent woods as confused pollinators and animals are displaced by the commotion.

Violence edges even closer on page three; a pair of fully armoured cops conveniently camouflaged behind ball caps, sunglasses, and COVID masks are blurred as they creep across the front of the frame. Behind them are more cops in matching blue garb, and beyond them is a grouping of police suited up in beige military fatigues, carrying guns. These pensioned employees have their attention drawn in varying directions, their leisureliness proof of the disproportionate advantages for extractive industry that strikes promises with the government to sustain and create jobs. Within shift-work schedules used by the state is a strategy of respite that replaces fatigued officers and militarized police with freshly revived personnel who have had the luxury of unencumbered rest. \[5\] By contrast, Chiniquay and other resisters would hike the mountain, a journey that took the better part of a day, hauling not only the necessities for camp-based survival but materials like concrete or communal food needed for sustaining the resistance. Inclement weather in the rainforest created muddy conditions for hiking in the wet season, and during the summer, the area was blasted by a historic heat dome.

As the police presence increased, so did the expectations of the various leaders directing actions and calling upon peers to tend to the divergent needs of the protest. Of course, with so many folks present, intentions within the group grew more askew. \[6\] In contradiction to the position of the many abolitionists, there were also self-proclaimed peacekeepers who felt a need to offer kindness to police enforcing the court-ordered civil injunction regarding Tree Farm License 46\. \[7\] There were also those that felt more attached to the virtues of protecting a forest than the political imperatives of resisting the police, military, and their industrial allies and others geared up in designer activewear whose bodies had been unaffected by the harms of societal oppression. The bottom image on page three captures this unsettling confusion; two large tarps are caught suspended in a breeze, the scatterings of a camp tucked beneath them. Atop a felled tree is a folded towel, a flannel shirt, water bottles, firewood, a laundry basket, a box of granola bars. On the road behind are trash bins, buckets, and a tent. Above this camp, perched upon interlocking skinned logs, is a forest protector; we cannot see if they are agitated, confident, fearful, pleased, or otherwise as their facial expressions are concealed behind a teal scarf. The photograph has an uncomfortable weightlessness, lacks an anchor of stability—a condition familiar to those on the front lines, where moral compasses wobble at the need to compromise individually held values to make way for consensus. If we look closely, there is another arrangement of cops interacting with others on the ground. In all these differing desires, an emotional fatigue engorged the spirit of the already physically exhausted camp.

There is a callousness to the reckless expenditure of resources in a war raged against peaceful people fighting to preserve humanity amid a climate catastrophe—especially in light of public outcry against bulging police budgets. As of the end of December 2021, the RCMP had spent a total of $10,060,583 \[8\] on direct costs related to enforcing this injunction alone. Chiniquay captures a sign from the front line proclaiming “WE SERVE AND PROTECT MOTHER EARTH,” written in black, white, and blue duct tape on a grey tarp—an ingenious display of economical, recycled items that riffs on the RCMP’s motto. Based on their physical violence, their arrests and arbitrary detentions, and their deployment of chemical weapons \[9\] in defense of industrial assets, this service and protection is clearly unevenly distributed.

As the Fairy Creek demonstration raged on, several other simultaneous infringements upon Indigenous rights were occurring. On the East Coast, the Sipekne’katik fishery continues their plight against violent racism for their fisherpeople to have their treaty rights of moderate livelihood protected. In Ontario, police enforced cruel punishment against resisters at 1492 Land Back Lane where developers are looking to convert Indigenous land into another sprawling suburb.[^10] And in “British Columbia,” Verene Shepherd, chair of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, penned a letter \[11\] of criticism to the Canadian government for an investigation into the RCMP’s violations of international human rights and Indigenous rights against Secwepemc women (Tiny House Warriors) and Wet’suwet’en land defenders (Gidimt’en Access Point) leaders. \[12\] The pressures of these simultaneous fights weigh heaviest upon those who have already endured the embodied or inherited struggle against colonization.

31 bison were released in Panther Valley to freely roam in Banff National Park on July 29, 2018, after being exiled from the preserved and monitored park for over a century. \[13\] Chiniquay and his relatives were involved throughout the process of reintroduction and he is currently developing a film tentatively titled _Tâtangâ Ûhpé_ about the reunification of _tatâga_ (bison) with the Mînî Rhpa Mâkoche (Banff). The film will engage many of Chiniquay’s relatives, community members, and Elders as creative collaborators and researchers. Although their community is situated in proximity to opulent arts and cultural resources, it takes the clever initiative, technical wherewithal, and sustained humility of a group of caring Nakoda youth to bring conscious creative practice to their community. The work of repairing and restoring the ecosystem is best led by those that have always loved and cared for it; this is the root of the LANDBACK movement. Chiniquay shares with me that he was first drawn to these front lines in the West Coast, far from his home territories, so he could feel what his ancestors felt when their _tatâga_ were disappeared by the ruthless efforts of settlers to clear and conquer the grasslands. He succinctly says, “A lot of who I am is because of my grandma.”

We wander, with Chiniquay’s photos, in morose curiosity, sensing the desperation that would accompany such a violently enforced eviction of the forest. Cautiously avoiding fixed forms of narrativization, we still dread the inevitable and begin to question how long until this exquisitely lush watershed is rendered lifeless for monetary gain. Regarding the bottom image on page two, Chiniquay tells me his dendrologist friend shared with him that by living fast and falling hard, hemlocks support cedars. With average lifespans of less than 80 years, their decomposing remains nurse the soil and its interconnected critters living in the darkest creases of the forest floor. Chiniquay was drawn to document these hemlocks because old-growth logging companies like Teal-Jones designate them as waste, tossing them into piles that dry out into gigantic bundles of kindling ripe for forest fires. Everything within this photo is dewy, every layer lush in a variety of livingness. I’m reminded of an APTN article about the AV Club’s collectively authored “Ahomapénî; Relations and Rez Dogs” (2018); in it, Jarrett Tymen explains that “Ahomapénî is a Nakoda word acknowledging a _being’s right to exist in its own way_.” \[14\] Among many things, this series serves to honour this landscape before the pillaging renders it unrecognizable; in that way, it holds the tone of a eulogy.

[^1]: “Old growth definitions and values,” British Columbia, accessed June 21, 2022, [www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/industry/forestry/managing-our-forest-resources/old-growth-forests/old-growth-value](www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/industry/forestry/managing-our-forest-resources/old-growth-forests/old-growth-values)
[^2]: “Huu-Ay-Aht, Pacheedaht, Ditidaht First Nations Take Back Decision-Making Responsibilities over Ḥahahuułi,” Huu-Ay-Aht, June 7, 2021, <https://huuayaht.org/2021/06/07/huu-ay-aht-pacheedaht-ditidaht-first-nations-take-back-decision-making-responsibilities-over-%E1%B8%A5ahahuuli/>
[^3]: “Nakoda Audio Visual Club,” accessed June 7, 2022, <www.nakodaavclub.com/>
[^4]: Stoney Nakoda Nations, _Enhancing the Reintroduction of Plains Bison in Banff National Park Through Cultural Monitoring and Traditional Knowledge: Final Report and Recommendations_, April 4, 2022, [https://a.storyblok.com/f/112697/x/d0b9253d5a/stoney\_bi-son\_report\_final\_rev2.pdf?fbclid=IwAR3dy-HLSkB509hQcn6Stqcm-Vspt1C9kMCXgsEZOASU- jN\_ZltNntlHRw2co](https://a.storyblok.com/f/112697/x/d0b9253d5a/stoney%5Fbi-son%5Freport%5Ffinal%5Frev2.pdf?fbclid=IwAR3dy-HLSkB509hQcn6Stqcm-Vspt1C9kMCXgsEZOASU-)
[^5]: Nora O’Malley, “Police Enforcement at Fairy Creek Watershed Cost Canadians More Than $10 Million,” _Tofino-Ucluelet Westerly News_, January 20, 2022, <a href=www.westerlynews.ca/news/police-enforce-ment-at-fairy-creek-wa-tershed-cost-canadi-ans-over-10-million/
[^6]: I’m reminded of Steven Guilbeault, the current environment minister and former Greenpeace celebrity, who staged a stunt resulting in arrest in 2001, to see how boisterous acts of heroism can form on front lines.
[^7]: A tree farm licence (TFL) is an area-based tenure that grants exclusive rights to harvest timber and manage and conserve forest resources within a defined area of land. “TFL 46,” British Columbia,<www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/industry/forestry/forest-tenures/timber-har-vesting-rights/tfl/tfl-46>
[^8]: O’Malley.
[^9]: Jerome Turner and Ora Cogan, <www.teenvogue.com/story/police-violence-fairy-creek>
[^10]: Luke Ottenhof, “Stand-off at 1492 Land Back Lane,” _The Walrus_, February 8, 2021, <https://thewalrus.ca/standoff-at-1492-land-back-lane/>
[^11]: Verene Shepherd, Chair, Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to H. E. Mrs. Leslie Norton, Permanent Representative of Canada to the United Nations Office, 29 April 2022, Geneva, <https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CERD/Shared%20Documents/CAN/INT%5FCERD%5FALE%5FCAN%5F9554%5FE.pdf>
[^12]: Lee Wilson, “UN Committee Calls for Investigation of RCMP on Secwepemc and Wet’su-wet’en Territories,” APTN National News, May 13, 2022, <www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/un-committee-calls-for-investigation-of-rcmp-on-secwepemc-and-wetsuweten-territories/>
[^13]: “Plains Bison Reintroduction – Banff National Park.” Parks Canada Agency, Government of Canada, March 17, 2020, <www.pc.gc.ca/en/pn-np/ab/banff/info/gestion-management/bison>
[^14]: Melissa Ridgen, “The Rescue of Rez Dogs: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” APTN News, October 15, 2020, <www.aptnnews.ca/infocus/the-rescue-of-rez-dogs-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly>

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Soloman Chiniquay’s photographs provide an unsensational view into the Ada’itsx/Fairy Creek Blockade, in defense of old-growth forests on Canada’s West Coast. Chiniquay’s images reveal to us “a set of boundaries that are considerately navigated,” guest curator nicole kelly westman observes, adding: “After all, not everything is for the taking.”

"Makochi Nibi ihoniach (The Land is Close to Death)" by Soloman Chiniquay: Text

Artist

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Indigenous

Activism

Mâkochî Nîbi Îhonîach (The Land is Close to Death)

Review

Eleonor Botoman is a critic and poet based in Brooklyn, NY, whose work has appeared in _Artforum, The Sunlight Press, Interiors, BUST Magazine, The Mantle,_ and more. She currently works as a sketchbook librarian at Brooklyn Art Library and publishes her newsletter, _Screenshot Reliquary_, every month. 

In 2012, Patricia Corcoran, Charles Moore, and Kelly Jazvac coined the term “plastiglomerates” to describe the peculiar geological phenomenon of rock sediment fusing to plastic refuse, a fossil-like embodiment of the Anthropocene. Allison Cobb’s _Plastic: An Autobiography_ (2021) begins with a similar entanglement of synthetic materials as she collects an unidentifiable, discarded plastic part near her home. Like an artefact, the plastic will sit by Cobb’s desk and eventually accompany her on many cross-country trips as she attempts to locate the origins of its creation.

_Plastic: An Autobiography_ contains, in fact, many biographies beyond Cobb’s own story. Like the splintered fragments of roadside litter and polystyrene detritus pushed by ocean currents between continents, Cobb’s poetic prose takes us beyond her fascination with plastic to: the coastline of Hawai‘i where photographer Susan Middleton extracts World War II–era plastic from a dead albatross’s stomach; to low-income communities of colour along Louisiana’s Cancer Alley where residents continue fighting against the pollution of ever-expanding petrochemical plants; and to 19th-century Belgium where chemist August Kekulé conceives of benzene’s chemical structure. Paralleling recent reports of microplastics found in animal and human organs and bloodstreams, plastic is everywhere in Cobb’s collection of historical narratives, simultaneously seen and unseen through discarded objects and toxic emissions. These stories become a spatio-temporal map, as multigenerational linkages trace the escalating resource consumption that has come to define our modern petroculture. These linkages also outline the consequences of such a destructive economy, with its designated “sacrifice zones.” One such sacrifice zone is in Freeport, TX, which is home to Dow Chemical’s largest manufacturing facility. In these sacrifize zones, waste is dumped with little regard for vulnerable residents who grow sicker with cancer and smog-related illnesses.

Another entanglement explored by Cobb: the nuclear. In discussions of the long-term human impact on the planet, plastics and nuclear radiation are understood as separate categories of harm. Yet, as Cobb weaves together their parallel histories of scientific invention, their material lineages are revealed to be deeply intertwined: the eventual key to the atomic bomb’s success is an interior lining of polyethylene (chosen for its high density), separating the detonation into two stages. Yet, the connection doesn’t end there. The Marshall Islands, seized by the United States government in 1944, became the site of a nearly decades-long nuclear testing campaign. While many parts of the island chains remain contaminated and local wildlife is considered too radioactive for human consumption, the Marshallese people now living on its scarred lands must also reckon with an ever-growing accumulation of plastic waste as a result of required food imports.

In 2013, ecocritical scholar Timothy Morton coined the term “hyperobjects” to describe the peculiar phenomenon of entities that exist on such massively incomprehensible scales that they become unbound from spatio-temporal specificity. This notion of hyper-objectivity has been attributed to plastic and radiation alike, with each occupying outsized roles across our bioecological systems through their chemical immortality. Cobb, while not making direct reference to Morton’s ontological concept, acknowledges plastic’s and radiation’s phantomic presence. Feeling the lingering trace of material afterlives in collected plastics and particulates, Cobb decides to act on this “hauntology,” working “to embody and record our pained entanglements.” The World War II–era fragment extracted from the albatross in Middleton’s photo is later identified as a US Navy ID tag from Pacific-based air squadron VP-101, symbolizing the moment plastic production accelerated beyond our comprehension. The leftover radiation from ’50s nuclear testing is now present in the tissues of every living thing on Earth as a marker called the “bomb pulse” which scientists use for dating.

As these materials gradually decay while never entirely vanishing from our lives, _Plastic: An Autobiography_ makes their historical through lines visible through the people whose experiences have been cast aside in the complex emergence of this polluted epoch. The environmental racism that has sickened generations of families in poor neighbourhoods of colour throughout the United States’ industrialized zones intersects with the COVID-19 pandemic, which has also impacted communities along racial and socio-economic lines. Cobb takes us to Los Alamos, a hometown that’s shared by the atom bomb, her own family, and the family of Polish American scientist Stanislaw Ulam, who relocated there to work on the Manhattan Project. In another conversation with a friend, artist, and third-generation _hibakusha_ (atomic bomb survivor) Yukiyo Kawano, Cobb apologizes for the US military’s atomic destruction in an impossible attempt to heal the wounds caused by imperial violence. In Cobb’s text, the consequences of plastic-nuclear toxicity are inherited by subjects in both physical (cancer, stress-related illness, litter, smog) and psychic (grief, anger) forms. History does not repeat itself; Cobb recycles it, as the buried legacies of plastic-nuclear toxicity highlight the ongoingness of imperial environmental violence.

_Plastic: An Autobiography_ ends where Cobb’s story begins: with the same found piece of plastic. After spending years tracking down the origins of a plastic part she found, Cobb finally manages to identify it as a piece of fender liner from a Honda Odyssey, potentially from a first-generation model. Throughout the book, Cobb calls dealerships and corporate offices, eventually locating the original designer of the Odyssey: Kunimichi Odaki. He declines an interview. The material-temporal pieces of this modern fossil are chipped away to reveal the more fragmented histories that informed its creation, offering us a better understanding of our relationship to these pollutive materials, their legacies of waste and consumption, and what is left behind long after we are gone. In the book’s final chapter, Cobb goes to tour a Honda assembly plant where she plans to “ask the company responsible for its manufacture, its birth, to also take responsibility for its never-ending death.” Notably, Cobb is not the one who confronts their factory tour guide in an uncomfortable exchange. Instead, it’s her partner’s daughter Aster who speaks, asking the tour guide why they can’t reuse this piece or take it back as its maker. Like many, this plastic remains unwanted, dislocated, eternal.

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_Plastic: An Autobiography_ was published by Nightboat Books, New York City, 2021.

 Plastic: An Autobiography - Allison Cobb

Ryan Ferko is an artist and filmmaker whose work is concerned with the narration of landscapes. Recent solo and collaborative work has been presented at Berlinale, New York Film Festival, Sharjah Film Platform, TIFF, and MOCA Toronto.

Spanning more than five decades worth of material, “The Children Have to Hear Another Story” (2022) is a comprehensive retrospective celebrating the cinematic voice of Alanis Obomsawin and the blurry lines between artist, activist, musician, and filmmaker that have defined her career. Starting in the ’70s, Obomsawin developed a process of recording conversations on tape long before the arrival of any camera—part of a careful method of relationship-building that would come to lie at the core of her film works. Removed from the cinema and installed in the thoughtfully designed, elliptical exhibition space of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Obomsawin’s work takes on an affecting physicality, turning the patient duration of her films into objects of great scale. The result is a generous, cumulative experience echoing Obomsawin’s approach to filmmaking, where each film feels resolved unto itself, while also being in dialogue with the works that surround it.

Introduced in the exhibition texts as activist cinema, Obomsawin’s practice presents a complex range for what such activism can look like. In _Richard Cardinal: Cry from a Diary of a Métis Child_ (1986), Obomsawin presents an unflinching portrait of 17-year-old Richard Cardinal, who tragically took his own life after being forcibly removed from his family and shuttled between white foster homes. Interviews with Cardinal’s brother explaining the daily abuse experienced at the hands of foster families are interspersed with conversations between Obomsawin and Cardinal’s foster parents. Sitting in a prairie farm landscape in the mid-’80s, these white farmers speak English with a slight accent, suggesting their own recent arrival to this landscape. The violence of Canada rests in these bleak details: where European settlers carry out the work of forced assimilation and cultural genocide against Indigenous peoples, and then sit down in an attempt to explain themselves. Cardinal’s diary, however, rings out as testimony. His detailed explanation of the muddy basement cellar where he was forced to sleep exposes the violence that these families, and the Canadian government, assumed would go unseen.

Among Obomsawin’s best-known works, like _Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance_ (1993), the exhibition also presents lesser-known short documentaries made for television. In “Old Crow” (1979), Obomsawin constructs a lyrical portrait of a Yukon community. Structured around candid interviews and voice-over narrated letters written by a community elder, a drifting, handheld camera leads viewers to a surreal, playful conclusion wherein children make papier-mâché masks and descend into a theatre performance. These moments reveal the joyful burst of life characteristic of much of Obomsawin’s work, and as if to enforce this sense of life beyond the screen, the masks themselves populate the exhibition space.

The exhibition also subtly presents the fissures that lie beneath the clarity and resolve of Obomsawin’s films. In a 1987 internal memo, Obomsawin protests the National Film Board’s (NFB) decision to quietly cancel plans for Charlie Cardinal, Richard’s brother, to accompany a tour of the _Richard Cardinal_ film in schools across Canada: “I am amazed at how easily money and programs are made available for non-Native people to go into Métis communities and reserves, to seek information and try to make contact to develop a relationship between the Board and our people. These programs are never questioned, no matter how much of a failure they end up to be.” The tone of Obomsawin’s memo starkly contrasts newspaper clippings that appear throughout the show, alongside a small citation: “courtesy the artist.” In these clippings, Canadian newspapers express shock at the story of Richard Cardinal and call for inquiries into the foster system. Poignantly, we see Obomsawin amassing her own media archive, which, when presented alongside her films, situates the political climate within which these films were made, while critiquing the colonial institutions that supported their production.

The NFB and the CBC loom heavily over the exhibition, at once producing and distributing these works while also representing the settler-colonial state as public institutions. In one CBC program from 1964 called _The Observer_, a white host smirks at the audience while wheeling out a tray of bear meat after Obomsawin performs a song live on the program. “That was beautiful, but I didn’t understand the words,” says the host. Here, we see the paradox of these perceived benevolent institutions, defined by a desire for understanding that stops short of addressing actual sovereignty, and where Indigenous cultures are only celebrated when contained and controlled. While the clip is from early in her career, its position at the end of the exhibition invites a parting reflection on Obomsawin’s ongoing ability to forge a space for Indigenous storytelling from inside such troubled institutions. “Progress is a very beautiful word that the white man has for himself,” says Obomsawin, in response to the host, as a red CBC logo glows on the bottom right of the screen.

Upon entering the exhibition, visitors encounter another CBC interview from 1966, wherein Obomsawin laments the future of Abenaki peoples: “I don’t know, maybe it will all just be French-Canadian. No nation wants that, to not exist.” Inside another benevolent institution, the House of the World’s Cultures, this idea of threatened sovereignty should resonate with European audiences. Shortly after the opening of Obomsawin’s exhibition, tens of thousands marched through nearby Tiergarten park, calling for peace in solidarity with Ukraine, while carrying signs denouncing imperialism, resource extraction, oil economies, and occupation. As a discourse unfolds on social media about whiteness, what a refugee may look like, and who might be welcomed into a fortress of Europe, another question is raised by these films: whose sovereignty is worth marching for?

Alanis Obomsawin has made a lifetime of work celebrating Abenaki, Mohawk, Métis, Cree, and Mi’kmaq cultures and resistance. Simultaneously, she has created a detailed portrait of the violent, cyclical logic of settler colonialism: a portrait that directly implicates Europe. In a CBC interview from 1982, Obomsawin explains how she met an Indigenous man in northern Manitoba who spoke Cree, English, French, and German. “Can you imagine?” she asks, as if to emphasize the resilience of Indigenous languages in the face of multiple attempts at forced assimilation. Now, these films made by an Abenaki artist in English and French return with German subtitles to the same continent that imposed its languages, religion, and culture on Turtle Island. Obomsawin’s voice and the certainty of her image making ring clearly: as she states in a 1970 letter to the NFB, “\[W\]e don’t want anyone to speak on our behalf anymore.”

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“The Children Have to Hear Another Story” ran from 12 February to 18 April 2022 at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. Curated by Richard William Hill and Hila Peleg.

"The Children Have to Hear Another Story" - Alanis Obomsawin

In her essay “Homeplace: A Site of Resistance,” late feminist scholar bell hooks describes how the private space of the home can be a radical site for Black liberation. She highlights the caretaking role that Black women adopt in the home—whether actively chosen or thrust upon them by gendered divisions of labour—to frame nurturing as “a political commitment,” where community building begets political resistance. It is a fascinating essay that encourages us to think through the ways in which the spaces we create for ourselves and each other can be both restorative and transformative.

hooks’s writing on the space of the home was on my mind as I encountered “Out of Many,” Jorian Charlton’s solo exhibition curated by Emilie Croning and presented in collaboration with Wedge Curatorial Projects and Gallery TPW. Large-scale vinyls featuring stylized portraits of Charlton’s friends and family are presented alongside album-sized photographs taken by her father, Clayton Charlton, throughout the ’70s and ’80s as he travelled between Jamaica, New York, and Toronto. The exhibition is situated within a larger story of Black diasporic migration, mediated by political, historical, and structural forces that prompt the following questions: why do people leave their homelands? What are the conditions of their migration? What does it mean for Black diasporic subjects—themselves displaced by deep colonial violence—to migrate to anti-Black settler colonies? How are they welcomed (or not welcomed) in their new locations? “Out of Many” explores the complexities of these questions by foregrounding the intimate realities of leaving and recreating one’s home.

The exhibition exemplifies various types of intimacy, all of which contribute to the feeling of stepping into a private space, despite the fact that the images line the walls of one of Canada’s largest public art institutions. Roughly half of Jorian’s 29 ethereal photographs depict the inside of various homes, including six portraits set in a bedroom, and one photo in a kitchen. Several of the photographs set outdoors even depict subjects in a backyard—an extension of the home. In _Untitled (Brenda 2)_ (2020), a woman dressed in pink, lacy lingerie sits atop a bed on her knees, while angled away from the camera. She touches her hair with one hand, while the other holds a small mirror, which she stares into. In _Untitled (Shai & Lex)_ (2020), a couple embraces in a kitchen, with a bag of sugar and a jar of jerk seasoning visible on the shelf behind them. Shai sits on the countertop, tenderly holding Lex close while dreamily gazing at the camera’s lens. In _Untitled (Jem & Miki)_ (2020), two stylish women delicately sit on a patch of grass, with a white shed and bush-lined wooden fence visible in the background. They lean into each other for support, their arms and legs interlaced. The exhibition frequently highlights private moments such as these—various stages of undress, intertwined couples (both romantic and platonic), and dreamy gazes— to craft a sense of vulnerability typically reserved for those we trust most.

The inclusion of Clayton’s photographs brings yet another level of intimacy to the exhibition. His untitled photographs are arranged on two intersecting walls erected in the centre of the gallery. The walls are decorated with wood-panelling wallpaper and are designed to look like the interior of a vintage living room. Viewers must step into this semi-enclosed space in order to get a better look. Dozens of small-scale, eclectically framed photographs require that you lean in close to observe their details. The photographs are installed mere inches apart and are mounted roughly at eye level, encouraging a slow and personal engagement with each image. The depicted scenes include: a woman sitting on a cream leather couch who adjusts the bright turquoise rollers in her hair, a dancing couple holding on to each other with a firm yet graceful touch, and a stylish man wearing blue bell-bottoms posing on a lawn chair in a backyard.

Upon close inspection, the parallels between Jorian’s and her father’s photographs become clear: they both share an affinity for documenting private and ephemeral moments in the lives of those nearest to them, as they find beauty in the everyday. The intimate portraits demonstrate the significance of belonging among Black diasporic communities who have migrated to anti-Black settler colonies. These are the liberating spaces we can create for ourselves and each other, the spaces that the Charltons so skillfully capture. Jorian Charlton has a remarkable ability to bring forth the tenderness of each of her subjects, even when they are posed with confidence and daring allure. Throughout these portraits, a sense of closeness is evinced in a faithful embrace, a dreamy gaze, a loving gesture, or a moment of affirmation. Through her camera’s lens, Jorian Charlton carefully frames subjects as they express private lives in an intensely public space, offering viewers glimpses into these intimate moments.

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“Out of Many” ran from 18 December 2021 to 7 August 2022 at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Curated by Emilie Croning. 

"Out of Many" - Jorian Charlton 

In many Indigenous cultures of Turtle Island, the Medicine Wheel is a symbol of abundance and healing that weaves the spiritual and physical worlds together. The four colours depicted on the wheel—black, red, yellow, white—symbolize the four directions, seasons, or stages of life, serving as a reminder that our lives, too, are governed by cycles. Depending on the Nation, the Medicine Wheel can take various forms: an artwork or a physical structure on the land. For me, the Wheel is a representation of the connective values of my people, the Tāłtān Nation of Northwest British Columbia. Despite my participation in this newfound colonized society, I am nonetheless surrounded by my Ancestors, wherever I go. They whisper to me in the wind, they envelop me in their calm waters, and they ground me on this solid, gritty Earth.

In Western culture there is a visually similar symbol: the hazardous materials identification system, which categorizes the various dangerous and toxic effects of chemicals that are used on industrial labour sites. Here, the four colours—blue, red, yellow, white—are depicted to warn users of potential health, flammability, and instability risks. In Postcommodity’s recent major exhibition, “Time Holds all the Answers” at the Remai Modern arts centre in Saskatoon, both the Medicine Wheel and the hazardous materials identification system feature prominently throughout, speaking to tensions between Indigenous worldviews and impacts of colonization.

In _kinaypikowiyâs_ (2021), four multicoloured debris booms hang heavily from the archway to the entrance of the exhibition in glaring shades of blue, red, yellow, and white. The title of the installation refers to the Plains Cree word for snake meat. These debris brooms are used in various bodies of water to capture and dispose of environmental contaminants like garbage, oil, and chemicals. Deflated and looming in length, they wrap around the shoreline like a pool tube forgotten at the lake on a blistering summer day. While the debris boom is made with good intentions, it is difficult to deny that we are creating human-made tools to rectify human-made issues. In contrast, environmental disasters brought on by extraction activities did not exist in pre-colonial societies. There was no trash in the ocean, nor radioactive diseases in fish—the basic consensus to respect the land and its offerings prevented our Ancestors from causing such events. The polarity between these lenses of seeing the world—one acknowledges the power of healing, while the other accentuates the detriment of harming—is made prominent through the associations not just with colour, but with what is viewed as important and essential to classify in everyday life.

In an installation titled _South By North Is Also North By South_(2021), a pile of barrels repeats the blue, red, yellow, and white colours found in _kinaypikowiyâs_. Yellow barrels recall the hazardous materials identification system for radioactive elements like uranium. As one of the most commonly mined and extracted resources in Saskatchewan, uranium is a dense grey metal with radioactive properties that make it ideal for the production of nuclear power plants and military-grade ammunition. Here, the industrial purpose associated with this otherwise bright and sunny colour is weaponized against the very land it came from. Yellow is at once a signifier of destruction and also that which is spiritually nascent in the Medicine Wheel: dawn, Spring, East. One is noxious, the other nutritious: both yellow.

_Going to Water_ (2021) is a multichannel surveillance video displayed on projector screens, materializing the Owens Valley in California. Known as Payahuunadü, or “the land of flowing water,” this place was previously utilized as a popular trading and hunting ground by surrounding Indigenous communities. The valley is now a dry carcass of what it once was due to the aqueduct installation of the early 1900s, which was put in place to provide clean water to the growing population of Los Angeles. However, the detrimental effects were felt by the nearby Paiute Nations of Bishop and Lone Pine as they simultaneously lost vital water access to sustain their communities. The camera footage in _Going to Water_ is derived from a government agency’s documentation of the current conditions in the valley, and is paired with an ambient, wistful soundtrack to encompass the relationship between then and now. The song itself is reminiscent of a sound I am all too familiar with: the slow, guttural hum that reverberates from a hide-stretched drum in Tāłtān ceremony. It is the sound of grief, of loss, of facing the end and being told to move on.

Postcommodity’s exhibition highlights how physically and socially devastating industrial activities have been to Indigenous cultures. It is important to provide our retelling to a one-sided history, as our stories have been narrated far too often by the same settler hands who moulded them. My Tāłtān name, given to me by my grandma, is spelled “Te’ł tā mā.” In English, it translates to something like “walking stick along the shore.” This name represents strength, stability, and perseverance through high waters. Like the walking stick, “Time Holds All the Answers” encompasses the idea of security in identity, despite the tides that threaten to pull us under. Postcommodity offers us a window into Indigenous lives in a world transformed by settler-colonial violence.

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“Time Holds All the Answers” ran from 18 September 2021 to 23 January 2022 at Remai Modern, Saskatoon. 

"Time Holds All the Answers" - Postcommodity 

Shazia Hafiz Ramji received a 2023 Critic’s Desk Award from _Arc Poetry Magazine_ and was a finalist for the 2023 Alberta Magazine Awards. She lives in western Canada and London, UK. Shazia is the author of _Port of Being_. 


For some of us, home cannot be understood as a specific place. In “Letters for Occasions,” Farah Al Qasimi’s photo-based installation, the artist looks at home in less spatial terms: home is joy, rest, family. Time collapses and expands through photographs that collage a global landscape of domestic interiors. In _Kimball Hotel, Springfield_ (2021), a photograph depicts shrimp and strawberries scattered across a thick, pale turquoise fabric, with a pink canopy bordering the bottom of the image. On the right side of the image is a postcard and a menu from the Kimball Hotel. Shrimp and strawberries may be inviting, luscious foods, but the wall text reveals that Al Qasimi’s grandmother discovered she was allergic to both shrimp and strawberries while working as a cook at the Kimball Hotel. In this same image, pinned to a lettuce leaf, is a family photograph of two women whose faces are obscured by jewel-like flowers. This gesture of concealment accords respect and privacy for Al Qasimi’s family within the highly visible context of the gallery space.

_Anood in the Guest Bedroom_ (2020) depicts a woman in a hijab reflected through a mirror. The photograph is cropped in such a way that we barely see her face or what she is doing with her hands while she is seated on a bed beside a golden teapot and a half-full glass of black tea. A passport-sized photograph of a man is pinned to the mirror’s fame, placed in juxtaposition above the woman. There is saturated colour throughout the image, from the yellow gingham curtains behind the mirror, to the ornate green shawl and its mirror reflection. What becomes clear in the flattening effect of the images in the mirror is the conflation of space. One has to look carefully to distinguish the foreground from both the background and the mirror’s reflection. Similarly, in an untitled grainy inkjet print pasted over an entire wall, the eyes of Al Qasimi’s aunt glitter with a smile whose lower half is obscured by a recipe for a spaghetti dish written in Arabic. Al Qasimi places a bright red strawberry amid the mauve-toned floral wallpaper in this image, drawing attention to the contrast between the floral wallpaper’s genericism and the intensely personal strawberry allergy.

Al Qasimi’s vibrant colours and intimate compositions are characteristic of the warmth and immediacy of her approach. Among the series’ most affecting images is _Hand Print_ (2021), a detail of an ornate fabric that could be on a couch. Al Qasimi centres imprints and indentations on the fabric, as if someone who had just been there left their trace. Here, Al Qasimi attends to the quotidian and personal with a tender gaze. While dominant narratives of Lebanese people, Arab communities, and Islamic cultures often hinge on the very opposite of joy, Al Qasimi’s photographed interiors critique assimilation through the specificity of filial joy and personal histories. At the same time, Al Qasimi’s warm images are charged with tension: recall the strawberry allergens that undercut _Kimball Hotel, Springfield_’s bright colours, or the recurring gestures of concealment. _Six Different Screams_ (2021), a series of six small photographs depicting the interior of the artist’s mouth, also complicates the warmth of Al Qasimi’s images. The extreme visibility of her tonsils was a result of Al Qasimi’s attempts to identify symptoms of COVID-19 on her tonsils before screaming into the camera. As if to gesture toward the complicated affective world of diasporic subjects, the repeated images of Al Qasimi’s mouth are placed next to the untitled image of her smiling aunt.

In the exhibition’s accompanying audio discussion, Al Qasimi tells us that “Letters for Occasions” takes its title from a book she read in grade school. The text taught students how to translate letters for different scenarios, such as expressions of condolences and gratitude, from Arabic to English. In these photographs, the scenario for Al Qasimi is a domestic one. In attending to seemingly insignificant interior details, Al Qasimi’s art functions like a prayer. By choosing to represent and enlarge minute details from daily life, she transforms the everyday into something sacred. In this way, the quotidian becomes an occasion for recognition and reverence.

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“Letters for Occasions” ran from 29 January to 26 June 2022 at Esker Foundation, Calgary. 

"Letters for Occasions" - Farah Al Qasimi 

Raven Spiratos holds a Master of Art History from McGill University, supervised by Dr. Charmaine A. Nelson. Raven Spiratos is a writer, curator, and researcher.


_Carnation_ is a self-published zine that centres BIPOC artists and writers who, in the words of editors Christina Hajjar, Luther Konadu, and Mariana Muñoz Gomez, contemplate “displacement and diaspora.” In the second volume of _Carnation_, the editors invited contributors to think about/around pleasure. What resulted was a compilation of beautifully complex, sensorial explorations of pleasure from the perspectives of racialized people, spanning joyous moments crystallized in short stories, tender portraits, and erotic scenes.

The invitation for BIPOC artists and writers to meditate on pleasure is one of tremendous power. An intentional move toward pleasure signals a transition from survival to thriving. To centre pleasure is the shift from thinking “What if we died tomorrow?” to “But, what if we lived?” In a section titled “Letters Between the Editors,” readers get a glimpse into the editors’ process of deciding on the theme of pleasure, and compiling the volume. In these conversations, Konadu introduces pleasure as an unreachable oasis. Hajjar responds with a sense of desire and yearning: “Truth be told, I want to live in the proverbial oasis. […] I am filled with idealism, imagining how our lives could overflow with play, pleasure, indulgence, leisure, and love.” Like Hajjar, when considering an oasis, I think of a fertile patch where rest and replenishment is possible. Muñoz Gomez generatively complicates the notion of a proverbial oasis by reminding us that not everyone moves toward pleasure in a carefree manner. They ask if “thinking of pleasure as something unreachable or dangerous to engage with [places] it further away from us than we could have imagined? Does it then become that proverbial oasis, a mirage that we’re not sure how to taste, or are afraid or ashamed to accept?” Konadu leaves us with a possible strategy: “To hold in pleasure is to embrace one’s own confidence, to be resistant to a harsh reality after stepping out of one’s own oasis.”

Another related notion taken up by _Carnation_’s contributors is that of pleasure as utopic resistance. In the poem “NEW YEAR ! NEW ME ! NEW ECSTASY !” Olivia Klevorn describes the morning after a night out as being “in the wake of utopia, / a crashing wave, / Becumming,” while Jas M. Morgan’s foreword invokes a “Sapphic, ‘Land Back’ utopia that radical youth and activists can clearly envision.” Morgan in particular centres the importance of anticolonial pleasure in a settler-colonial state.

In “Miniswin,” Vanessa Anakwudwabisayquay Susan Cook writes about a moment in her childhood when she first encountered a raspberry. The berry called to her before she even knew their name and once Cook tasted the fruit, it was as if the vibrancy of life was switched on, forever changing her experience of life through joy, pleasure, and gratitude. Lan Florence Yee and Arezu Salamzadeh also engage past pleasures in _Please Help Yourself_, which consists of two photographs of glazed ceramic tangerine peels. The peels become vestiges of fruit that has since been eaten, and traces of shared care.

In a vignette titled “Lovely night to be dancing with you,” Chiamaka Barbara Ukwuegbu narrates a scene from the home she shares with her partner. Ukwuegbu shows readers the process in which safety, understanding, joy, spontaneity, care, and pleasure allow an uncomfortable narrator to release the anxiety that arose when her partner offered her unconditional love and vulnerability through touch. Preston Pavlis also depicts pleasure in the domestic space. Pavlis’s _lucky to be me_ pairs a poem with a portrait of a seated African-descended person resting their head in one of their five hands. They gaze out at the viewer with one eye that is visible, while the other is lost in shadow. Their legs dangle past the edge of the frame, as if to suggest that pleasure cannot be limited to the realm of abstract figuration. As we learn across the pages of _Carnation_, pleasure is real, political, and transformative. 

The collected writing and art in _Carnation_’s second volume engage pleasure as: freedom, reciprocity, care, indulgence, relaxation, community, sex, and so much more. Pleasure is the sustaining practice with which we orient our lives. 

Thank you to my friends, family, and chosen family whom I have the honour of orbiting. I never write in a vacuum: Karen Carter, Claudia Pensa-Bowen, M Muxcyo, Jayda Alexander, Fola Kortee, Kasra Faraji-Tabrizi, Thomas J. Price, Eagleclaw Thom Bunnie, Sarah Edo, Nada Khashaba, Anick Jasmin, Marina Spiratos—thank you for answering “What does pleasure mean to you?” I cherish our exchanges.

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_Carnation, Vol. 2 (Pleasure)_ was published by Carnation, Winnipeg, 2021.

Carnation, Vol. 2 (Pleasure) - Ed. by Christina Hajjar, Luther Konadu, Mariana Muñoz Gomez

Angel Callander is a writer, editor, and curator in Toronto. She is currently a PhD candidate in Art History and Visual Culture at York University. Her work can be found in publications such as _CBC Arts, Canadian Art, BlackFlash,_ and _esse arts + opinions_, among others, as well as in _Imagining Futures of Experimental Media_ (Pleasure Dome, NIMAC & OddSite Arts, 2023) and _Architecture and the Smart City_ (Routledge, 2020).


In just over two decades of art-making, Portuguese artist João Onofre has taken great stock of grand themes such as failure, irony, endurance, performance, connection, and love. The artist’s first solo exhibition in Canada, at Daniel Faria Gallery in Toronto, consists of only three pieces, but still encapsulates Onofre’s thematic oeuvre and multimedia practice in photography, sculptural objects, performance, and video works. Shown together, _Untitled_ (1997), two conjoined stethoscopes arranged on a plinth, to be used by a pair of listeners to hear one another’s heartbeats; _Your closed hand makes the size of your heart and together they make the minimum distance that it could be from another one_ (2001), a chromogenic print of two fists referencing the relative size and proximity of two human hearts; and the video work _Untitled (zoetrope)_ (2018–19) ally to trace the various contours of individuals in relation, and how commonality forms when we are willing participants in the absurd.

_Untitled (zoetrope)_ was created for the 2019 exhibition “Once in a Lifetime [Repeat]” at Culturgest in Lisbon, a retrospective of the previous 20 years of Onofre’s practice. Consisting of a gospel choir, two-dozen rugby players, and a four-person band, the camera consistently pans in a circle around the groups in a large studio. The band and choir perform a rendition of Foreigner’s 1984 power ballad “I Want to Know What Love Is,” while the rugby players run one by one toward a microphone swaying from a cable attached to the studio ceiling, each attempting to sing as much of the chorus as possible before being tackled to the ground by another player.

At two hours and 22 minutes, it is Onofre’s longest video work to date. While many of his earlier videos only run a maximum of several minutes to be intentionally played on a loop, _Untitled (zoetrope)_ ebbs and flows, documenting the tenacity of the performers and effecting more of a continuous reverberation between the individual and the group. The choir takes a break while the band continues, the band stops for the choir to sing a cappella, and the rugby players continue their pursuit—some manage to sing the whole chorus, some barely utter a single note.

In earlier video works, such as _Casting_ (2000), _Instrumental version_ (2001), and _Pas d’action_ (2002), Onofre focuses on groups of people performing their hard-earned expertise—namely young actors, the Chamber Choir of the University of Lisbon, and the National Ballet Company of Portugal, respectively. Onofre injects a bit of the absurd into the repetition and duration of their actions, for example, directing the actors in Casting to each recite Ingrid Bergman’s final lament from Roberto Rossellini’s 1950 neorealist drama _Stromboli_; to similar effect, the choir singers in _Instrumental version_ are instructed to perform Kraftwerk’s “The Robots.” By probing and interrupting the natural flows of communication, meaning, and aptitude, a space opens up in these works to more closely inspect our perceived boundaries around artifice and authenticity.

With this strategy, Onofre highlights how the conventions through which culture expresses itself can be manipulated to reveal their vulnerabilities. The structure evolves in _Untitled (zoetrope)_, as multiple groups present different skills, and members of one of these groups—the rugby players—partially exercise a skill completely outside their professional comfort zone. There is more playfulness and joy expressed in this departure, just as it exposes the tensions in the relationship between director and performer. Over time the prdirector and performer. Over time the s begin to accept the futility in their task to sing the entire chorus, and a more mischievous and resolute energy develops between them. All the while, the director’s camera pans around the performers, relishing in the mix of their “authentic” skills with the “artifice” of the pop culture they perform.

Exploring the intricacies of group and individual behaviour as they relate to one another, Onofre also dispels with the particular narcissism of self-exploration that Rosalind Krauss declared the locus of video art and performance for the camera. In the canon of durational performance art, which most often invokes artists like Chris Burden, Marina Abramović, and Tehching Hsieh, one can often sense an overwhelming seriousness, and indeed a darkness to exploring existential limits and human traumas. Onofre, rather, operates with a sense of humour about failure and fortitude that lifts some of the humiliation from the former and emboldens the latter. Self-awareness, usually a defence mechanism against acting out of character, dissolves into the peculiar solidarity of undertaking a futile performance together.

Shown alongside _Untitled (1997)_ and _Your closed hand makes the size of your heart_, this exhibition focuses on an overarching emotional circularity that activates themes of romantic connection. Yet ultimately, these works come back to love in the form of camaraderie, partnership, and a strange bond of togetherness in the awkward. The fear that underpins love is that of failure, and of embarrassing oneself. Emphasizing the importance of relationships while critiquing what coheres a shared identity, Onofre presents the inevitability of failure and the struggle for perseverance as parts of life to be wholly embraced. At Daniel Faria Gallery, Onofre’s work oscillates between points of ridiculousness and hopefulness, pairing humour and humility to consider the subtleties of the individual in relationship with others.

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João Onofre’s self-titled exhibition ran from 20 November to 22 January 2022 at Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto.

Header

C Mag

Issue 152

Extraction

Credits

Related Events

Letters

Letters

Editorial

Editorial: Extraction

Explore Issue by Images

Features

Trickle Down

Cooked Earth: Ambivalence in Terracotta

Golden Jubilee: An interview with Suneil Sanzgiri

Dowsing for Remediation, with Alana Bartol

Dreaming of Decriminalization

Artist Projects

"Makochi Nibi ihoniach (The Land is Close to Death)" by Soloman Chiniquay: Text

Mâkochî Nîbi Îhonîach (The Land is Close to Death)

Columns

Composition: Transplant Collaborations

Tilling: Permanence for Black Diasporic Art in Canada

Reviews

Plastic: An Autobiography - Allison Cobb

"The Children Have to Hear Another Story" - Alanis Obomsawin

"Out of Many" - Jorian Charlton

"Time Holds All the Answers" - Postcommodity

"Letters for Occasions" - Farah Al Qasimi

Carnation, Vol. 2 (Pleasure) - Ed. by Christina Hajjar, Luther Konadu, Mariana Muñoz Gomez

João Onofre

"The Meaning of Life" - Hannah Black

"The best stories I know come from late night car rides or kitchen tables." - Brenda Draney and Tanya Lukin Linklater

If From Every Tongue it Drips – Sharlene Bamboat