Pasapkedjinawong: La rivière qui passe entre les rochers—the river that passes through the rocks

12 June 2021 – 19 September 2021

About the Exhibition

Curated By

John G. Hampton & Léuli Eshrāghi

Organized By

MacKenzie Art Gallery

Galleries

RHW, Hill & Rawlinson Galleries

Pasapkedjinawong presents artists from across Turtle Island and the Great Ocean who examine how languages survive, adapt, exceed, or resist frameworks of colonial violence and repression. Considering languages and cultures as living systems in the manner of rivers and other bodies of water, this exhibition looks closely at what happens when the customary flow of a language is interrupted, diverted, or impeded by an outside force. Our languages adapt, slow to a trickle, leave dry paths carved in the land that are waiting for new rainfalls, or flow ever strong through new or neighbouring channels; and the perseverance of these waters continues to feed and sustain the peoples and cultures that rely on them.

The artists in Pasapkedjinawong represent this continuing lifeforce, articulating renewed architectures of language and thought fed by new and ancestral ways of knowing and viewing the world. Employing sound, silence, image, body, fibre and tactility, they each map the multiple currents that flow past the seemingly monolithic domains of colonial languages to expand our imagination and understanding of unfurling histories and futures of culture and communication on this Planet.

FEATURED ARTISTS:

Joi T Arcand, Patrick Cruz, Nikau Hindin, Cathy Mattes, Caroline Monnet, Faye Mullen, Rashaad Newsome, Kite and Devin Ronneberg, Carl Trahan, and Gutiŋarra Yunupiŋu.

Works in the Exhibition

Installation view, Pasapkedjinawong, MacKenzie Art Gallery, 2021. Photo by Don Hall.

Installation view, Pasapkedjinawong, MacKenzie Art Gallery, 2021. Photo by Don Hall.

 
Gutiŋarra Yunupiŋu, My connections, 2019. Digital film. Photo by Don Hall.

Gutiŋarra Yunupiŋu, My connections, 2019. Digital film. Photo by Don Hall.

 
Kite and Devin Ronneberg, Ínyan Iyé (Telling Rock), installation view, 2019. Translation by Alex Firethunder. Song, power, sound, processors, machine learning decisions, handmade circuitry, gold, silver, copper, aluminum, silicon, fiberglass. Photo by Don Hall.

Kite and Devin Ronneberg, Ínyan Iyé (Telling Rock), installation view, 2019. Translation by Alex Firethunder. Song, power, sound, processors, machine learning decisions, handmade circuitry, gold, silver, copper, aluminum, silicon, fiberglass. Photo by Don Hall.

 
Carl Trahan, Dérangment, 2013. French-English diagram for translations of the French word “dérangement,” written in chalk. Photo by Don Hall.

Carl Trahan, Dérangment, 2013. French-English diagram for translations of the French word “dérangement,” written in chalk. Photo by Don Hall.

 
Installation view, Pasapkedjinawong, MacKenzie Art Gallery, 2021. Photo by Don Hall.

Installation view, Pasapkedjinawong, MacKenzie Art Gallery, 2021. Photo by Don Hall.

 
Rashaad Newsome,
Shade Composition Screen Tests, 2005-ongoing. Single-channel video, 8 minutes.

Rashaad Newsome,
Shade Composition Screen Tests, 2005-ongoing. Single-channel video, 8 minutes.