Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts

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Parmela Attariwala , "Soundings Performance," 2019

performs Peter Morin’s score "NDN Love Songs" at Agnes Etherington Art Centre

Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts

Guided Walk with Daniela O'Fee

Join local artist Daniela O'Fee on a guided soundwalk Wednesday, June 23 at 6:30 pm. This soniferous walk was created by O'Fee as a public program coinciding with Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts. We are honoured to work with O'Fee in realizing this program.

How can a score be a call and tool for decolonization?

Curated by Candice Hopkins and Dylan Robinson, Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts features newly commissioned scores, performances, videos, sculptures, and sound by Indigenous and other artists who respond to this question. Unfolding in a sequence of five parts, the scores take the form of beadwork, videos, objects, graphic notation, historical belongings, and written instructions. During the exhibition, these scores are activated at specific moments by musicians, dancers, performers, and members of the public gradually filling the Gallery and surrounding public spaces with sound and action.

This touring exhibition has been presented at Agnes Etherington Arts Centre, Queens University, Kingston, Ontario; Gund Gallery at Kenyon Collage, Gambier, Ohio; Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, Kitchener, Ontario; and Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC. It is cumulative, gathering an ever-changing community of artworks, shared experience and engagement as it travels. Soundings shifts and evolves, gaining new artists and players in each location. Some artworks have multiple parts, others change to their own rhythm as the exhibition grows.

At the core of the exhibition is a grounding in concepts of Indigenous land and territory. To move beyond the mere acknowledgement of land and territory here means offering instructions for sensing and listening to Indigenous histories that trouble the colonial imaginary. Soundings activates and asserts Indigenous resurgence through the actions these artworks call forth.

Artists

Raven Chacon and Cristóbal Martínez, Sebastian De Line, Camille Georgeson-Usher, Maggie Groat, Kite, Germaine Koh, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Ogimaa Mikana, Peter Morin, Diamond Point and Jordan Point, Heidi Aklaseaq Senungetuk, Greg Staats, Olivia Whetung, and Tania Willard, with more performers, artists, and composers invited to respond and create new works as the exhibition travels to each new venue, including collaborations with the Kamloops Symphony Orchestra and new work by Aaron Leon and Garry Gottfriedson at the Kamloops Art Gallery.

The exhibition tour has been organized by Independent Curators International (ICI).

About the Curators

Candice Hopkins is a curator and writer of Tlingit descent originally from Whitehorse, Yukon. She is Senior Curator of the Toronto Biennial of Art and co-curator of the 2018 SITE Santa Fe biennial, Casa Tomada. She was a part of the curatorial team for documenta 14 in Athens, Greece and Kassel, Germany and a co-curator of the major exhibitions Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art, Close Encounters: The Next 500 Years, and the 2014 SITElines biennial, Unsettled Landscapes in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her writing is published widely and her recent essays and presentations include “Outlawed Social Life” for South as a State of Mind and Sounding the Margins: A Choir of Minor Voices at Small Projects, Tromsø, Norway. She has lectured internationally including at the Witte de With, Tate Modern, Dak’Art Biennale, Artists Space, Tate Britain, and the University of British Columbia. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art and the 2016 the Prix pour un essai critique sur l’art contemporain by the Foundation Prince Pierre de Monaco. She is a citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation.

Dylan Robinson is a xwélméxw artist and writer of Stó:lō descent, and the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Arts at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. His current work focuses on the return of Indigenous songs to communities who were prohibited by law to sing them as part of the Indian Act from 1882–1951. Robinson’s previous publications include the edited volumes Music and Modernity Among Indigenous Peoples of North America, 2018; Arts of Engagement: Taking Aesthetic Action in and Beyond the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2016, and Opera Indigene, 2011. His monograph, Hungry Listening, was published in 2020 with Minnesota University Press.

About ICI

Independent Curator’s International supports the work of curators to help create stronger art communities through experimentation, collaboration, and international engagement. Curators are arts community leaders and organizers who champion artistic practice, build essential infrastructures and institutions, and generate public engagement with art. Our collaborative programs connect curators across generation and across social political and cultural borders. They form an international framework for sharing knowledge and resources–promoting cultural exchange, access to art and public awareness for the curator’s role.  www.curatorsintl.org

Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts is curated by Candice Hopkins and Dylan Robinson, and organized by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University, Canada. The traveling exhibition is organized by Independent Curators International (ICI). The exhibition and tour are made possible, in part, with the generous support from ICI’s International Forum and the ICI Board of Trustees. Additional support has been provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts’ New Chapter Program, the Isabel and Alfred Bader Fund of Bader Philanthropies, the Ontario Arts Council, the City of Kingston Arts Fund through the Kingston Arts Council, and the George Taylor Richardson Memorial Fund at Queen’s University.

The Kamloops Art Gallery has a number of performances, conversations, and programs planned for you this Spring—including a collaboration with the Kamloops Symphony Orchestra. Follow us on social media and subscribe to our e-newsletter for the most up-to-date information about programs.