Joi T. Arcand, Patrick Cruz, Susan Hiller: athut / Words Bounce

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Susan Hiller, "Lost and Found," 2016

digital video

Join us for the opening on Thursday, January 24 at 7 pm

athut / Words Bounce Joi T. Arcand, Patrick Cruz, Susan Hiller

Sometimes words are dropped, and sometimes they are thrown; sometimes they bounce away, and sometimes they bounce back. athut / Words Bounce is an exhibition of painting, installation, photography, and video works by three artists who engage languages as they shift, transform, and even disappear, while impacting people and the cultures they belong to.

In this exhibition, Joi T. Arcand, Patrick Cruz, and Susan Hiller approach language as both a subject and a means of articulation, amplified through art. Some of the works in athut / Words Bounce see the generative possibilities of hybridized understandings and mistranslations, while others highlight the vital importance of direct language advocacy to cultural resurgence.

The English title Words Bounce ricocheted from a very precise two word sentence found in a verse novel by Canadian author Anne Carson* The Hul'q’umi'num title, athut, was provided by Gary Manson and Adam Manson, language advocates from the Snuneymuxw Nation. athut is not a translation of Words Bounce, but rather a parallel title responding to the exhibition on its own terms.

Speaking of languages as they transform, evolve, disappear, and rebound, athut / Words Bounce is the final exhibition in a year in which Nanaimo Art Gallery asks the question: how can we speak differently? In Hul’q’umi’num, the language of the Snuneymuxw people: scekwul yuxw ‘alu kws nec’s tu sqwal ct

*Carson, Anne. Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 1999.