#call/response

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#CALLRESPONSE

Christi Belcourt, IV Castellanos, Marcia Crosby, Maria Hupfield, Ursula Johnson, Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Isaac Murdoch, Esther Neff, Tanya Tagaq, Tania Willard and Laakkuluk Williamson-Bathory

Organized by Tarah Hogue, Maria Hupfield, and Tania Willard

Co-presented with TRUCK Contemporary Art and grunt gallery.

Opening Reception: Saturday, January 19, 2019 at Stride Gallery (7:00–9:00 PM) and TRUCK Contemporary Art (9:00–11:00 PM). Starting at TRUCK from 7PM to 9PM Ending at Stride from 9PM to 11PM

Stride Gallery and TRUCK Contemporary Art presents #callresponse, an artistic and curatorial collaboration co-organized by Tarah Hogue along with project artists Maria Hupfield and Tania Willard. The project began with a series of five commissions by Indigenous women and artists whose home territories are located in the Canadian nation state.

Each artist invited respondents to consider her work; contributions from the initial commissions as well as the responses are included in the exhibition. The pairings include Christi Belcourt and Isaac Murdoch; Maria Hupfield and IV Castellanos and Esther Neff; Ursula Johnson and Cheryl L’Hirondelle; Tania Willard and Marcia Crosby; and Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory and Tanya Tagaq. Following the initial commissions, a touring exhibition opened at grunt gallery in Vancouver in 2016, with selected representations of each project continuing to evolve with each geographic location to which it travels.

Guided by Anishnaabe Nation intelligence as told by Washkigaamagki (Curve Lake First Nation) Elder Gidigaa Migizi (Doug Williams), we act in the spirit of Nanaboozho, who is interpreted by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson as Kwezens, whose

“very presence simultaneously shatters the disappearance of Indigenous women and girls from settler consciousness. … [She propels] us to rebel against the permanence of settler colonial reality and not just ‘dream alternative realities’ but to create them, on the ground in the physical world, in spite of being occupied.”

#callresponse promotes discussion and action around Indigenous cultural revitalization, land-based knowledge, and cross-cultural solidarity. Shining a light on work that is both urgent and long-term, #callresponse acts as a connective support system that begins with commissioned artworks created by five Indigenous North American women artists and their invited respondents.

#callresponse strategically centers Indigenous women across multiple platforms, moving between specificity of Indigenous nations, site, online space, and the gallery. The project focuses on forms of performance, process, and translation that incite dialogue and catalyze action across borders between individuals, communities, territories and institutions. An online platform using the hashtag #callresponse on social media connects the geographically diverse project sites and provides opportunities for networked exchanges.

#callresponse is informed by discussions about the importance of Indigenous feminisms in grounding our lives and work in reciprocal relations, while critiquing and refusing the intersections of colonialism and patriarchy. The project reorients the vital presence of Indigenous women—their work and their embodied experiences—as central, as defining, and as pre-existing current appeals for a reconcilable future.

#callresponse is a production of grunt gallery and is funded by the {Re}conciliation Initiative, a partnership between the Canada Council for the Arts, the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, and The Circle on Philanthropy and Aboriginal Peoples in Canada. The exhibition tour is supported by The British Columbia Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts.