Soloman Chiniquay, jaz whitford | Ake Huchimagachach Ena (I’ll see you again mother) Ake Huchimagachach Ade (I’ll see you again father)
Artspeak Gallery 233 Carrall Street, Vancouver, British Columbia V6B 2J2
Soloman Chiniquay and jaz whitford, "Coast Salish Territory from the Ake Huchimagachach Ena (I'll see you again mother) Ake Huchimagachach Ade (I'll see you again father) series," 2020
Courtesy of the Artists.
In Stoney there is no word for goodbye, only “Ake Huchimagachach,” which means “I’ll see you again in this life or the next.” A gesture toward boundless preservation, Soloman Chiniquay and jaz whitford create cultural memoirs, enlivening the mundane of the colonial condition with colourful markings that re-root Indigenous accounts of place and land. Consisting of digital images manipulated with superimposed acrylic, oil, and ink, the collaboration repositions common conceptions of land as static or commodity to something alive, vocal, and with agency. With a dynamic range of point-and-shoot images, Chiniquay’s and whitford’s quiet observations frame sites of familiarity, intimacy, grief, longing, and possibility. A mirror to dispossession, Ake Huchimagachach Ena (I’ll see you again mother) Ake Huchimagachach Ade (I’ll see you again father) posits Indigenous life, labour, and connection as vital to the embodiment of sovereignty and the self-determination of land. Central to the series is a method of exchange. Their approach fuses photography, painting, and conceptualism that culminates in an offering – placing the value of art in the act of collaboratively envisioning practices of stewardship and care.