Kiona Ligtvoet: These Are the Things

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Kiona Ligtvoet, "Should've Let You Teach Me to Drive," 2020

acrylic and graphite on canvas

Kiona Ligtvoet’s solo exhibition in the Garage, These Are the Things explores Ligtvoet’s non-linear means of storytelling, drawing from memory, writings and photographs. Kiona describes the work as “a gentle attempt at navigating intergenerational barriers to grief, tenderness and longing, in the presence of enfranchisement and personal displacement”.

These Are the Things takes the form of an installation of paintings with an assortment of “nostalgic objects,” and writing by Paxsi who will join Ligtvoet later this spring for a gift-giving workshop—a moment to remember missed homes and families through a virtual collaboration.

The Garage is a site at Latitude 53 for experimental new work by early-career artists. This year, Latitude 53 has been working with artists based in the city and surrounds through a process of peer nomination and vision. By asking members of artists' own communities to recommend and collaborate with artists making new work, we hope to encourage artists to realize ideas that were just waiting for a home. This past year, the Garage has featured work made on the gallery walls themselves by Michelle Campos Castillo, and Mitchell Chalifoux's transformation of the space into a studio for virtual performative collaboration with other artists.

“These Are the Things is a gentle attempt at navigating intergenerational barriers to grief, tenderness and longing, in the presence of enfranchisement and personal displacement. It gives space to the lingering complexities of what was taken, a gratefulness for what couldn’t, and for the things that are still nurtured.

“The stories shared through this work come from memories of living with my moshom and a revolving door of family members on scrip land, as well as the loss that has come with leaving home. This work is story-telling, and repetitive attempts at re-mapping scrip land to how I know it, as opposed to the documentation of its enfranchisement that’s found in colonial archives.

“This is where we watched bats flying overhead in the dark until we fell asleep in damp grass, its where my moshom always wanted to teach me to drive on the gravel roads and old wagon trails (but I was too scared), its where my cousin and I lived one after the other and repeat, and it’s where I’ve sat gossiping on the steps of the bunkhouse with my mom during dry prairie summers. In her words, these are the things they couldn’t take.”

—Kiona Ligtvoet

Kiona Ligtvoet (she/her) is a mixed Cree, Métis, and Dutch artist coming from scrip land, and descending from Michel First Nation. Kiona is currently practicing in amiskwaciwâskahikan, where she primarily works in painting and printmaking while exploring stories of grief and tenderness.

Her practice uses a non-linear telling of memories through narrative work as a form of personal archiving. It draws from feelings of loss, displacement, and enfranchisement, but also from moments of deep belly laughter.

Paired with her studio practice, Kiona has also been working alongside other artists in initiatives of community care, co-organizing Making Space in partnership with Sanaa Humayun. Making Space is a visual-arts focused BIPOC peer mentorship group prioritizing collaboration through workshops, artist visits, studio hangouts, and a shared love of gossip, support, and privacy.

Paxsi (they/them/jupa) is a two-spirit, displaced Aymara and Welsh-Irish singer-songwriter and multidisciplinary artist. Combining elements of folk and rock, Paxsi plays their original music under the stage name WARA WARA. Paxsi’s art, poetry, and music offer moments of tenderness and honesty—they hope to nurture community through a practice that is raw, vulnerable, and charged. You can find their artwork and music on Instagram @paxsi__ and @listentowarawara respectively.