8.50 CAD / USD ART / CULTURE / POLITICS / States of Coloniality Kency Cornejo p.24 / Leah Decter and Carla Taunton p.32 / Sakahàn p.40 / Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa p.11 / David Garneau p.14 / Julie Nagam p.22 / Berlin Reed p.4 / Miguel Rojas-Sotelo p.5 / Gordon Brent Ingram p.7 / Heidi McKenzie p.8 / Decolonial Aesthetics Manifesto p.10 / Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen p.49 / Who is Dayani Cristal? p.50 Read-in p.43 / Time Lapsed p.46 / Border Cultures p.47 / DECOLONIAL AESTHETICS DECOLONIAL

Taghavi and Tannis Hashemi, Maryam BONUS!

Poster by Gita Nielsen Artist’s

FUSE MAGAZINE 36 – 4 FALL 2013 EDITORIAL

EXPERIENCE STATES OF POST TORONTO COLONIALITY/ TRANSFORMED DECOLONIAL BY ARTISTS AESTHETICS OCTOBER 5 A i W 11 eiw 20 ei, les, SUNSET TO Forever Bicyc SUNRISE

C This issue of FUSE was produced col- Decoloniality is cast, by Walter Mignolo and other h 1 r members of the Transnational Decolonial Institute, as the radical i 1 laboratively with the e-fagia organization. Based s 0 t other of modernity-coloniality. Throughout a diffuse and influential in 2 , in Toronto, e-fagia was founded in 2004 with the body of work, they write of a decoloniality of knowledge, being and e e One night only. I n r i v h mandate of promoting digital art, focusing on Latin aesthetics. Within this framework, decolonial aesthetics acknowl- in c g a edges and subverts the presence of colonial power and control in & M American and Canadian artists. A generous pres- All night long. In art the realm of the senses. A decolonial approach refers to a theoreti- tera He ence on the Toronto art scene, over the past decade ctive Art, The cal, practical or methodological choice geared toward delinking All free. e-fagia has produced dozens of publications, aesthetics, at the epistemic level, from the discourse of colonialism exhibitions, festivals and workshops. When they that is embedded in modernity itself. With the symposium and this issue of the magazine, Including works by Ai Weiwei, approached FUSE in late 2012 to discuss collabo- e-fagia and FUSE set out to explore the resonance of decolonial- Kim Adams, Michel de Broin, rating on their ambitious symposium, Decolonial ity in aesthetic practice across the disparate geographies of the Aesthetics from the Americas, we were immedi- Americas and the Caribbean. This proposition has been particularly Max Dean, Kelly Richardson stimulating because in the Canadian context, for the most part, ately excited about the thematic crossover with vocabularies of decolonization and settler colonialism have been and Janet Biggs. our States of Postcoloniality series. A year later, more prevalent than those of decoloniality. As such, we present D here something of a fresh encounter, a new stimulus to ongoing o 2 we are proud to present to you the results of this u 1 and robust public discourse in Canada regarding the role of aes- g 0 la 2 partnership, which also serves as a reader for the s , thetic practice in a decolonial era. Two contributors in particular, C re o u Decolonial Aesthetics symposium, scheduled for David Garneau and Gordon Brent Ingram, explicitly grapple with scotiabanknuitblanche.ca u pt pl a the relevance of a decolonial framework for Indigenous decoloni- and e R 10 – 12 October 2013. Call 416-392-2489 | sbnuitblancheTO , Museum of th zation and settler colonialism in Canada. The Short FUSE section provides us with a sampling Finally, we wrap up the issue with reviews of Gita of aesthetic practices that conjure decoloniality — from Indigenous Hashemi’s exhibition Time Lapsed; Srimoyee Mitra’s group exhibi- site-based and public art in Vancouver, to the use of the Khabu tion curated for the Art Gallery of Windsor, Border Cultures: Part One or Tama (bastón de mando, “the stick”) by the Colombian (homes, land); two recent exhibitions by Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen; Kiwe Thegnas (the Indigenous Guard), to ingenious and inces- and Gael García Bernal and Marc Silver’s Who is Dayani Cristal? sant culinary innovations with the ñame (yam), to the oeuvre of Next up will be an issue that looks at the role of artists the late painter Denyse Thomasos. This issue also brings you and creative practice in the Idle No More movement. In the mean- rambunctious artist’s projects by Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa and time, please join us for the Decolonial Aesthetics from the Americas Julie Nagam, and a collaborative offering curated by Gita Hashemi conference in Toronto. with Tannis Nielsen and Maryam Taghavi. Leah Decter and Carla Taunton present a feature-length conversation about their respec- Gina Badger tive engagement of critical settler positions in their practices as with e-fagia and the FUSE Editorial Committee artists, instructors and activists. In another feature article, Kency Cornejo presents the recent work of several young Indigenous This issue is dedicated to Arlan Londoño (1962 – 2013), Guatemalan artists. co-founder of e-fagia, artist, curator and thinker. In his review column, Richard William Hill offers a thoughtful assessment of the curatorial premise and theoretical We are deeply saddened by the loss of this exuberant and gener- underpinnings of the National Gallery’s massive international ex- ous co-conspirator, from whom we have all learned so much, and hibition of Indigenous contemporary art, Sakahàn. Maiko Tanaka, we dedicate the present work to his memory. We have included a member of the Read-in group, reflects on their recent public read- project of Arlan’s alongside a text by Miguel Rojas-Sotelo and an ing of Sojourner Truth’s speech “Ain’t I a Woman” (1863). obituary on pages 52 and 53.

FUSE MAGAZINE 36 – 4 / Decolonial Aesthetics / Fall 2013

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Artons Publishing Lisa Steele purchases First North American Serial As generations of African slaves hid their gods and When we begin to see our seemingly disparate present- masked their dances, when left with refuse to fill their bellies they day cultures and political and socioeconomic realities through a A New created dishes as heartwarming as mofongo and chit’lins to heal decolonial lens, we can reclaim traditions by reconnecting our Indigenous and restore their bodies from the harsh realities of slave life. Many endurance of five centuries in the Americas to our future, ultimate of these dishes still nourish their descendants, who continue to liberation. Decolonial African American cuisine is an ownership suffer under the weight of a more covert master. One simple ingredi- and a repossession of African food history, and it unapologetically Ñame ent, the yam, tells the delectable story of a resourceful and defiant positions the Atlantic Slave Trade and its pervasive legacy as a resistance that has fed us since the Middle Passage. The yam (ñame central point of the global decolonial discourse. Guard(s) in Spanish, inhame in Portuguese, yamn in Haitian Creole) may be the most ubiquitous food transported with, by and for African slaves, An Exploration of Decolonial from their homes throughout Africa to the American plantations and Decolonial Performance, townships to which we, as slave descendants, now trace our lineage. African American Food Culture The many ways that this simple food has been used is inspiration not Re-Existence, Cultures of Survival only for the kitchen, but for an exploration of our varied colonial and Cuisine histories and our unified decolonial future. African-born slaves were faced with a range of influ- Yam Biscuits with Ginger Syrup ences on the cultures they brought with them. They were displaced Miguel Rojas-Sotelo Berlin Reed and dispersed across lands and subject to various slavery systems Yams are a sweet, nutritious relic of our history. With so many uses, it was difficult for me as a chef to choose just one recipe to share. This is my favourite weekend with specific colonizing methods of assimilation. They found treat. Don't worry, it's easy to change to fit all sorts of food sensitivities we’ve deve- Recently, in Cauca, in the highlands of differing climates and native plants, and encountered Indigenous loped in the “New World.” Feel free to experiment with cow’s milk, gluten-free flour or peoples who were struggling with the same colonizers. African sugar alternatives! Southern Colombia, the Nasa people called on the When gastronomy, the study of food cul- slaves across the Americas and the Caribbean used a lot of yams in Kiwe Thegnas (the Indigenous Guard) to protect their cooking and these influences contributed to the development ture, began as a concept in France 200 years Ginger Syrup of varied food cultures and traditions. In the Southern US, slave their communities from the aggression of armed ago, the Atlantic Slave Trade was still deposit- owners’ dependence on natural-born replacements for their labour Combine two parts maple syrup, one part blackstrap molasses and one state and private forces looking to promote and ing Africans about the Americas in exchange for force — as opposed to continually importing new bodies like most part lemon juice in small pot over low heat. Add a pat of butter and a generous amount of grated ginger. Keep warm while biscuits bake. develop resource extraction megaprojects on their exotic ingredients bound for the kitchens of rich colonies did — meant that slaves lost their connections to African traditions quickly and formed a cuisine that was much more ancestral territories. The Indigenous Guard is an Europeans. As colonies across the Eastern Hemi- dependent on the practices of their colonizers. Accordingly, sugar- expression of Nasa organizing to defend their Biscuits sphere likewise bulked up and diversified their sweetened pies and casseroles reflect the typically sweet-leaning rights of autonomy and their social and communi- pantries, elitist epicurean culture spread across Southern palate. Hotter climates, higher rates of slave importation 3/4 c cooked mashed yam (or sweet potato) tarian control over their territories. Today, armed and later abolition dates led to a much closer connection to African 1/2 c whole milk the world with the French (and other colonizing roots and a diet more heavily influenced by African traditions 1 1/2 c all-purpose flour only with the symbolic bastón de mando (a 1 tbsp sugar nations) values of exacting standards. Dining throughout the Caribbean and the Americas. As a result, we find 1 tbsp baking powder wooden stick), the Indigenous Guard fights the and food culture became the ultimate exercise savoury yam-based stews such as the Haitian bouillon, a succulent 1 tsp salt heavy weaponry of armed actors in the Colom- mix of beef, chicken and a range of vegetables, and Jamaican 6 tbsp cold unsalted butter, cut into small bits in capitalist elitism, and in turn traditional food Saturday soup, a brightly coloured, golden chicken and squash bian conflict, in many instances literally clashing cultures across the globe were devalued and combination, both of which capitalize on the sweet earthiness of Preheat oven to 425˚F. In a small bowl, whisk yams and 1/3 c milk. Set aside. Combine dry ingredients. Cut in butter. Add yam mixture to dry as a collective body against them. Between bul- dismissed while European tastes became known the yam. The myriad versions of sancocho, a stew found every- ingredients. Mix together using splashes of remaining milk as needed lets, mortar fire, air bombings and guerrilla and as “classic” and “refined.” Today, through the bus- where from the Dominican Republic to Colombia, often begin with a until dough is thoroughly moistened. Knead biscuits two or three times base of yam and plantain or cassava, and the Brazilian Bobó de on floured surface. Cut with floured cutter or rim of cup. Bake on antiguerrilla tactics from the National Army, tling growth of upscale comfort food in newly inhame similarly builds flavours of seafood, spices and tomato on a greased baking sheet for 11–14 minutes. paramilitaries, guerrillas and organized crime foundation of yam. Drawing on their familiarity with the yam, gentrified neighbourhoods across the Americas, Serve with syrup and soft butter. squads, the Guard symbolizes centuries of descendants of colonizers are profiting from the African-born slaves were able to make use of new and unfamiliar foods found in the Americas to create hearty meals. resistance to the war-machine of modern actors. appropriation of Soul Food, Afro-Caribbean and Just over a century since the last emancipation in the The genealogy of decolonial thinking and action is pluri- other African-influenced food cultures. These Americas (Brazil in 1888), we have reason to celebrate the postcolo- versal, not universal, and situated. As such, each knot on the web of establishments, predictably, succeed at the cost nial identities of Afro-Cubans, Texans, Haitians and Palenqueros, but this genealogy is a point of delinking and opening that reintroduces those identities also reinforce our separation. Marcus Garvey is often languages, memories, economies and social organizations. A of those who created these food cultures in areas quoted as saying “a people without the knowledge of their past his- collective voice, body and expression is rising as a chain of events — tory, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.” Decolonial thought actions bringing the actual to the table of the global. Their call of cities once deemed too dangerous (read: black Berlin Reed is a food warrior, radical connects the tree to the roots severed by the Atlantic Slave Trade, touches the colonial wound and rephrases the neocolonial mo- and poor) for moneyed diners. As so-called urban food theorist and queer artist bent on used to colonize the Americas. The yam is but one root among decolonizing cuisine. After training as a ment that is progress in the form of peace treaties, public policies, renewal pushes poor people out of their homes the many we have to thank for our survival of this atrocious and butcher in Brooklyn in 2008, he began a drug wars, never-ending paramilitary/guerrilla and mafia presence, and businesses to make room for people who will long-lived offense of the Western capitalist, imperialist system. Two life of continuous travel, bouncing around democracy and a popular culture that enjoys the spectacles of narco- equally satisfying bean dishes, the American Hoppin’ John and the the continent as a community chef/ telenovelas, news shows and futbol while others extract massive pay higher rent, the subsequent effects of pro- butcher, before finally settling in Montreal Brazilian feijoada, would usually be seen as unrelated within current in June 2013. He shared his experiences amounts of natural resources. longed cultural suppression and subservience are food culture that encourages a postcolonial identity in its defini- as a nomadic ex-vegetarian butcher and Historically, the Nasa and Guambiano peoples of South- often overshadowed by the more obvious issues tion of traditions by nationality. However, an Afro-futuristic concept renegade chef in a food memoir titled The ern Colombia were some of the last to be integrated by European of food justice. Contemporary culinary culture is of decolonial lineage extends from Africa across the Atlantic, and Ethical Butcher: How Thoughtful Eating colonialism in the region. Names such as La Cacica Gaitana and Juan touches every port from Halifax to Buenos Aires. Since decolonial Can Change Your World (Berkeley: Soft Tama represent Indigenous resistance and territorial gains of the a perpetuation of the colonial ideal of perfection, Skull Press, 2013). He has written for OP African American cuisine rejects delineations created by colonizers, Magazine and is currently working on his sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. [1] Simón Bolívar’s program even as the gleaming façade crumbles before us. those two bean dishes are, in fact, of the same culinary repertoire. next book, a decolonial cookbook. recognized Indigenous resguardos and would have been conducive

SHORT FUSE FUSE / 36 – 4 Decolonial Aesthetics SHORT FUSE / REED / ROJAS-SOTELO 4 5 to the return of lands usurped. This program, however, was not met, territory, the expulsion of military and guerrilla forces and the political An example of how difficult it remains for indigenous and Cauca landowners harassed the Nasa for land, reducing their mobilization across Cauca. artists to engage in contemporary practices of transforming public territories through institutional corruption and violence. The Khabu or Tama (bastón de mando, “the stick,” in Nasa Repopulating space on the West Coast is the saga of the work Native Hosts During the twentieth century, Manuel Quintín Lame language) is not only a symbol of power but also carries the spirit of (1988/91) by Cheyenne and Arapaho artist Hock E Aye Vi Edgar (1883–1967), Nasa and Guambiano, became the reincarnation of the community, and the ability to govern is transmitted to the wearer. Heap of Birds. Native Hosts is, so far, the most widely viewed piece Tama. He directed the struggle by using official documents and laws It commands respect towards the commoners. Usually the Khabu is of contemporary public art by an individual indigenous artist perma- as well as occupation; these actions usually began peacefully, but made of black wood from the Chonta Palma and is decorated with nently installed on the West Coast of Canada. Originally exhibited in Contentious 1991 at the Vancouver Art Gallery, its permanent installation on the often ended in confrontation and violence. The leader was impris- braids of wool or coloured ribbons (it formerly also bore a silver oned 108 times in his lifespan, persecuted and exiled from Cauca, handle). To hold a Khabu is a commitment to and with the community; University of British Columbia campus took another two decades and died in poverty as a landless exile. [2] rather than granting power over others, it orients subjectivity toward and only thanks to the artist’s donation of the work (as in, exception- Álvaro Ulcué Chocué (1943 – 1984), was the first Indig- a higher cause. Today as before, the Khabu symbolizes a connection ally discounted labour) to one of the most highly funded universities Territory in the world. enous priest in Colombia, a Nasa, an outspoken advocate for the to nature. The fruit of the chonta palm, chontaduro, is a staple of the Indigenous cause, who in many instances suffered discrimination Nasa diet, and its power is vested in rituals performed by traditional Against this backdrop of chronic devaluation of and persis- in order to demand the dignity of his people. Ulcué was murdered healers in the lakes, where the sticks are washed in sacred waters tent obstacles to indigenous artists engaging around photographic by paid assassins, “sicarios,” in November 1984, after meeting with and given to the bearers to decorate, as bonding in a relationship. Recent Strategies for Indigenous investigations and site-based interventions in disputed territory, military leaders the day before and after members of his fam- They become the common object that replaces weapons as a symbol aesthetics of indefinite decolonizations involve engaging around ily were injured and killed by the police in a peaceful occupation of pride. Even small children are vested with them, to start a process Northwest Coast Site-Based and communities, spaces and resources in ways that necessarily contest of Indigenous lands in 1982. He created the Proyecto Nasa (Nasa of training and responsibility to the community. That is how the long older notions of the public, of propriety and of the fair distribution of Project), in the framework of Catholic utopianism, which was a temporalities of Indigenous struggle in Colombia, as well as in the Public Art wealth. In order to envision new strategies of contemporary North- process of thinking, asking, deciding and acting. His death has not rest of the continent, are actualized. west Coast indigenous art focused on reoccupation and ease for been resolved. It is by accessing ancestral knowledge, delinking from a Gordon Brent Ingram intervention, a phase of remapping, testing and repopulating has In the 1970s, the Nasa organized the Regional Indig- linear history in a clear, transmodern move, and keeping autonomous been necessary (especially after two centuries of extreme demo- enous Council of Cauca (CRIC) to recover and defend the land, and organization (i.e., the cabildo and the resguardo) that communities I figure as long as we keep graphic declines). Over the last decade, some new practices and to achieve cultural autonomy. At the time, the reclamation took such as the Nasa share decolonial strategies. The Guard has been speaking then we still exist. strategies, contesting obstacles to indigenous transformation of on two faces: community organization and guerrilla tactics. On the stigmatized by the Colombian broadcast and print media as bar- public space, have emerged at a time when many treaty negotiations, one hand was the CRIC; on the other, a guerrilla commando named baric, uncivilized and uncooperative in the fight against terrorism —Marianne Nicolson [1] for local First Nations, have reached dead ends. after Quintín Lame led the MAQL (or “Quintineros”) front. [3] Their in which the country is so invested. They ask why Indigenous people Rebecca Belmore, Terry Haines and Marianne Nicolson struggle, marked by repression, massacres and the assassination have to be treated with exception, if what they need is to be consid- Despite the rising profile of indigenous [2] were based on the West Coast over the last decade, while exploring of leaders, has recovered 544,000 hectares in Cauca. ered and treated as normal Colombians. Violence is still directed at critical strategies for postcolonial interventions. Together, their selec- The Nasa are strategically located in a corridor that the Nasa’s most visible leaders and aims to dismantle their organiza- artists in contemporary Canadian art in recent de- ted works provide a sketch of the kinds of reassertion and testing connects the isolated western piedmont plains and Amazon tions. What the local and central governments as well as technocrats cades, significant blind spots and conflict zones necessary for the more ambitious and indefinite transformations of jungle — where illegal crops (coca and poppy) are cultivated—and and the military do not know about the Nasa is that they have been remain. On the West Coast of Canada, the direc- sites and the public sphere that could be considered occupation, or the Andes and Pacific coast, where illegal drugs are processed and involved in a process of empowerment in their communities that can rather reoccupation. shipped to global markets. In addition, in their ancestral territories teach us more about participatory democracy than any other experi- tion of photographic portrayals of communities and The most influential and symbolic indigenous work old and new mining resources (gold and copper) are in line to be ence in contemporary Colombia. lands by First Nations artists remains negligible, produced in Vancouver in the first decade of this century is Rebecca absorbed by local and transnational companies that with new tech- even after Vancouver’s decades of photoconcep- Belmore’s performance Vigil (2002), during which she evoked the nologies such as open-pit and top removal practices, are the new names of dozens of murdered and missing aboriginal women. frontier of development in a state with a lack of regulation. tualism and that movement’s theories of social While reciting their names, Belmore repeatedly nailed a red dress Today, there are no individual leaders like La Gaitana, Miguel Rojas-Sotelo is an art historian, engagement. Similarly, interventions in public space to a telephone pole and tore it off down to her undergarments. As visual artist, activist, scholar and curator. Tama, Quintín Lame or Ulcué. The Nasa understand that a vertical He holds a doctorate in visual studies, outside of reserve lands by First Nations art- a first gesture of repopulating, Belmore acknowledged individuals organization is easily destroyed, that modernity has created a cult of contemporary art and cultural theory. and populations disappeared through institutional racism, misogyny individuals, and that basing their struggle around a single person is Rojas-Sotelo worked as the visual arts ists, even where land claims are well articulated in and neglect. Belmore’s subsequent Launch A Feast For Scavengers too fragile a foundation. That is why they have called upon the Kiwe director of the Ministry of Culture of the courts, continue to be rare and difficult on the (2007), performed in Victoria, explored the cusp of land/sea art and Thegnas, which is composed of about seven thousand Nasa, young Colombia (1997–2001) and indepen- the rich cultural tropes around European marine contact. As another dently as an artist, curator and critic ever West Coast. The fallout of lost lands, resources males and females. They are in a constant process of learning since. He currently works and teaches at and livelihoods continues to dominate the lives of strategy for repopulating public space, Belmore illustrated the and sharing their history and struggle. This collective body is the Duke University for the Center for Latin deteriorating states of traditional fisheries and the respective precar- most visible image of a community organized by the deep roots of American and Caribbean Studies. Rojas- the generation previous to today’s emerging First ity and deprivations around traditional foods. In Launch A Feast communal, spiritual and political vision. They work voluntarily for two Sotelo is the director of the NC Latin For Scavengers, Belmore literally waded into a tangle comprised of American Film and New Media Festival. Nations artists. Documentation of and interventions years at a time, and during that time are trained culturally to be the in traditional territories outside of the Indian Act a raft, nets and herring roe as intended bait and a reticent seagull. collective voice of their people, spiritually to represent the values The scavengers, in this work, were as much those who came of Indigeneity and the protection of Mother Earth, and politically continue to be fraught with obstacles for First Na- through imperial intrusion as any seagull. One of the last of Bel- to understand and share their rights and obligations as Indigenous tions artists on the West Coast. The exceptions are more’s performances on the West Coast, Worth (2010), alluded to a citizens. While the Thegnas is not a military organization, it has well-managed commissions that rely on traditional well-publicized civil claim by a Toronto-based art dealer. As another recently been involved in the dismantling of military posts in their practice for repopulating, Belmore, who is now based in Winnipeg practices, with the effect of suggesting a modicum and closer to her traditional communities, confronted an economy of social inclusion and respect for local indigenous of cultural production still largely stacked against the autonomy [1] La Cacica Gaitana was documents to negotiate manuscript El pensamiento defensa de mi raza (In assassination of Father Indigenous peoples. Just cultures, while avoiding acknowledgement of un- and prosperity of indigenous artists. Yalcón from Huila, who in autonomous Indigenous del indio que se educó en las Defense of My Race). It Ulcué, joined the Ricardo four months after the Over the last decade, video installation has been the least 1540 led a united territories. selvas colombianas (The immediately became the Franco guerrilla group (a signing of the new Indigenous force to resist thoughts of the Indian “red book” of political former FARC platoon) to Constitution, on 4 July ceded lands and stalled treaty processes. constraining venue for indigenous artists on the West Coast, espe- the Spanish colonizers. Juan [2] Quintín Lame educated in the Colombian organization for Indigenous form the MAQL. It was 1991, twenty Nasa people, cially for transforming public memory and reimaging public space Tama de la Estrella, a Nasa developed a system of forests). The text was peoples in Colombia. demobilized in 1991 thanks including children, were where aboriginal sovereignty was fully established. Coyote X (2013) from Cauca, stopped sharing political knowledge completed in 1939 but to the new Constitution in massacred by para- [1] Marianne Nicolson, [2] “Indigenous” is not local groups or organizations violent confrontation and called proyecto de vida, published only posthu- [3] Some followers of Colombia, which recognized militaries over a case of personal communication capitalized in this essay and that use “Indigenous” in their was completed earlier this year by Terry Haines, only weeks before used colonial law and which is described in his mously in 1971 as En Quintín Lame, after the the fundamental rights of recovery of lands. with the author, 3 June 2013. capitalization is reserved for name or in self-reference. he died. The work focuses on both the coyote in urban Vancouver, an

SHORT FUSE FUSE / 36 – 4 Decolonial Aesthetics SHORT FUSE / ROJAS-SOTELO / INGRAM 6 7 animal of great importance to the artist’s Secwepemc and Tsilhqot’in through local histories of modernity/coloniality that extend beyond confluence of geopolitical crossroads is Mignolo’s border think- communities of central British Columbia, as well as a range of experi- her own ethnic heritage. Thomasos was born in the West Indies ing methodology put into practice. For Thomasos, the overriding ences of insecurity and mortality, including living with HIV. At one Denyse on the island of Trinidad in 1964. She came to Toronto at the age theme was not so much the journey or the act of travelling, as the point in the video, Haines spray-paints red “positive” symbols on rocks of eight. By 23, she had her BA in art history and painting from the documentation of unspeakable acts that humankind invariably at a public beach near Vancouver. Here, the artist/video documentar- University of Toronto, and by 25, an MFA from Yale. [3] Thomasos’s perpetrates on itself. ian intervenes in the world, taking on the wily characteristics of the first solo show, Scratch (2001), delved deeply and personally into Curator Ben Portis notes that Thomasos “developed a canine that is reasserting itself in Canadian cities. Coyote X is a koan Thomasos her Caribbean roots. In 2004, Gaëtane Verna, then Senior Curator distinctive mode of representational abstraction stylistically derived for survival. The practices for repopulating in Coyote X are evocative of the Foreman Gallery at Bishop’s University, along with Ingrid from New York school abstract expressionism — particularly atten- of the nineteenth-century Witsuwit’en prophetic movements around Jenkner of Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, co- tive to Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline — and Bini [3] in the Northwest Plateau territories of Haines’s communities. commissioned a multiwall mural installation. Tracking (2004) informed by artists of the intervening years from 1950s to present ! But in contrast to the various ghost dance cultural movements that Denyse Thomasos, consists of ephemeral wall paintings that track Thomasos’s life, such as Brice Marden, Richard Serra, Richard Long and Michael persisted in Far Western Canada, Coyote X is more about a symbolic Babylon (2005). according to their respective titles: Tracking: Thirty Years in Can- Heizer.” [8] Toronto-based African Caribbean Canadian writer M. renewal and persistence through the immortality of video. Acrylic on canvas. ada, Thirty Years in Trinidad, and Tracking: Bombings, Wars and NourbeSe Philip reflects on Thomasos’s aberrant relationship with The work of Dzawada’enuxw artist Marianne Nicolson Donovan Collection Genocide—A Six Months’ Journey from New York to China, Vietnam, abstraction: “In signalling her history, she subverts the conventions at St. Michael's of the Kwakwaka’wakw Nation centres on her traditional territory in College (University of Cambodia and Indonesia. The works address themes of migration, of abstract art… history becomes the subtext, the baseline… which Kingcome Inlet. Over the last decade, Nicolson created a number of Toronto). Image displacement, nostalgia and war. [4] remains in tension with the abstract nature of the work.” [9] By conversations in urban areas. Her site-based Cliff Painting (1998) courtesy of Olga Thomasos’s work revolves around a number of ideas bringing something new to the genre — a programmatic dimension Korper Gallery. contemporized traditional copper designs on a large surface above that converge in a key set of themes. For example, her insistence that speaks to slavery — Thomasos is playing out a colonial semio- the sea as part of reasserting natural landscapes as spaces for on referencing boats and travel in her art, and her treatment of sis that underscores her moral compass regarding coloniality of Kwakwaka’wakw culture and sovereignty. The practices for repopula- “unspeakable acts,” architectural structures and cages (and by power. In her words, “What I’m painting about is the structural psy- ting in Cliff Painting are subtle and powerful adaptations for cultural Heidi McKenzie extension, jails) are all derived from Thomasos’s core sense of chology of a mind that has been disrupted and distorted through renewal. A more urban step in these practices was developed by identity as a woman of colour who is descendent from slaves. This the Black experience in the Western world.” [10] Nicolson in The House of the Ghosts (2008), installed for a month is the lens through which she established and asserted her voice Thomasos birthed her own movement, representational on the north side of the Vancouver Art Gallery. This large, site-based Denyse Thomasos’s art is her vehicle as the subaltern. By using the term “people of colour,” Thomasos abstraction, where out of a sense of displacement from her own work was part of an intercultural conversation between two kinds of of resistance to the global marginalization of was also careful to embrace an inclusive subaltern voice, as op- culture, she incorporated material from a foreign country, and the public space: that of Nicolson’s traditional Dzawada’enuxw territory posed to identifying solely with the Black community. result is the creation of a new cultural phenomenon — a colonial and the multicultural and globalizing Vancouver, which is on unceded people of colour. Her work voices her specific The system of slavery is a matrix that is intrinsic to her semiosis. Thomasos’s resistance to the colonial oppression and the territory. The repopulating in The House of the Ghosts was infused subaltern locus of enunciation — woman of colour, art. While Thomasos was heir to African (from her slave lineage), global marginalization of people of colour demonstrates a postcolo- with the joy and expansive optimism of having access to and creative descendent of slaves, indentured workers and Asian (from her South Asian grandmother) and Indigenous nial self-reflexivity that extends beyond Thomasos’s Caribbeanness, control over a large, highly visible swath of public space. Nicolson’s cultures (from the Nepoya, Suppoya and Yao peoples of the and constitutes an additive identity and aesthetic that claims its 2013 video, Wel'ida Pała (The Flood ) explores the vulnerability of her Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean. Thomasos Arawak and Carib peoples purported to be in her bloodline), she space within the transcultural. As Verna underscores, Thomasos’s family’s village to disaster and climate change, combining documen- (1964–2012) was a Trinidadian-born, Toronto- contended that her work is ultimately rooted in her history, which range of thematic strategies “evinces an ongoing postmodern tary practices with an adjacent installation of orca whales, sometimes raised, New York–based abstract painter, whose began, ostensibly, with slavery. [5] Thomasos’s incorporation and obsession with both her personal history and a broader political thought to have the power of prophecy. The repopulating in this integration of slavery in her work was her way of expressing colo- memory.” [11] The legacy of Thomasos’s work remains a provoca- installation loops back, both in the documentary and in the reworking passion and rarefied zeal for life catapulted her nial difference, and thereby mitigating the vulnerability of space tive questioning of complacency as it pertains to race and repre- of sculpture through adjacent edged glass installations. and her work to international recognition and where the coloniality of power is enacted. sentation. With respect to injustice, inequality, racism, war and other Any kind of decolonial aesthetic anywhere in Canada must acclaim, and whose life was tragically abridged. Slave boats are near-ubiquitous in Thomasos’s post- unspeakable acts, Denyse Thomasos’s work calls on each of us to initially acknowledge the specificity and the full extent of the losses MFA work; her fascination with boats began after being transfixed account for our complicity as citizens in the world in which we live. of local indigenous communities, populations, economies and This paper grapples with the context, both social by a well-known cross section drawing of a 1788 slave boat. The cultures. These tentative beginnings of decolonial aesthetics on the and personal, that propelled Thomasos’s artis- image had a profound impact on the artist: “I saw things broken West Coast have centred on the acknowledgement of the unresolved tic trajectory, using the Argentinian semiotician down into an economy. People no longer existed as human beings. Heidi McKenzie is a Toronto-based indigenous experiences of depopulation, displacement and loss of They existed as numbers and measurements and money — as ceramic artist, arts critic and emerging Walter Mignolo’s theories on aspects of mod- curator currently completing her MFA in sovereignty, combined with still largely symbolic efforts to return to, products… The boat was a vessel, a container that symbolized Criticism and Curatorial Practice at OCAD intervene in and repopulate still-contested lands as safe and multi- ern colonialisms and colonial modernity. [1] that concept and facilitated the system.” [6] U. She has over twenty years of experi- cultural public spaces. Such emerging aesthetics acknowledge Mignolo describes the coexistence of modernity/ By their very presence, boats introduce the idea of jour- ence as a manager and broadcast producer the specificity and multiplicity of contestations over traditional coloniality, where modernity, as constitutive of the Americas, neying. Thomasos had an insatiable appetite for travel. Between in the not-for-profit arts sector and holds an MA in comparative European cultural sites, resources and cultural spaces in the context of departures from does not exist without coloniality. [2] Mignolo offers us an 2002 and 2004, Thomasos travelled to China, Mali, Senegal, Indo- policy from the University of Warwick traditional media and cannons. What distinguishes the development of alternative methodology for embracing a totality of paradigms, at nesia, Cambodia, Vietnam and India. Thomasos travelled in order (1994). She has presented at the Subtle decolonial aesthetics on the West Coast of Canada, is how few indi- once dominant and subjugated, mainstream and repressed, where to make contact with what she believed to be her family’s different Technologies and TechnoScience Salon genous public art interventions have been successfully carried out. all coexist at a crossroads of local histories enunciated from the points of origination. [7] Part of her personal contract with herself in Toronto (2012) and at the Race in the place of the Other. The subaltern is the Other, as distinct from as an artist was to live as full a life as possible and to energize Americas conference in Birmingham, UK (2013). McKenzie writes for Ceramics: Art [3] See James Mooney, The Ghost-Dance Gordon Brent Ingram is Métis with family the merely marginalized, insofar as violent oppression is impli- her art through her lived experience. Travel was a way of discov- & Perception, New Ceramics, FUSION, Religion and Wounded Knee (Washington roots in northern British Columbia and the cated by colonial difference. ering and documenting unfiltered original source material from Ceramics Monthly, Studio, Canadian DC: Government Printing Of!ce, 1896; Yukon. He grew up in a primarily Salish Thomasos’s work challenges the coloniality of power which to work. This comprehensive way of seeing the world at a Art and POV Magazine. repr., New York: Dover Publications, 1973); community on southern Vancouver Island. and Wayne Suttles, “The Plateau Prophet He holds a BFA in Photography from the Dance among the Coast Salish,” San Francisco Art Institute and a PhD [1] See Walter Mignolo, [3] In 1997, she received a (1999), a Pew Fellowship, a [4] These works were Chris Ballantyne, author, 18 March 2013. Thomasos Interviewed by [8] Portis, “Justi!cation for University, 2006), 39. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 13, from the University of California, Berkeley Local Histories/Global Guggenheim Fellowship and Joan Mitchell Painters and arguably pivotal in bringing Raymond Pettibon, Ben Portis,” in Wallworks: Acquisition,” in Wallworks, 2. no. 4 (Winter 1957): 353–396. in environmental design extending to site- Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern was invited into the stable of Sculptors Grant and a travel Thomasos’s career to the Lawrence Weiner, Christine [5] Milena Placentile, Contemporary Artists and [10] Franklin Sirmans, “In based art. He is part of an environmental Knowledges, and Border the Lennon, Weinberg residency at the American next level and were key to Swintak, Sol LeWitt and “Social Consciousness in Place, ed. Catherine van [9] M. NourbeSe Philip, the Citadel of Modernism,” design collaborative based in Vancouver Thinking (Princeton: gallery in New York, as well Academy in Rome. her being selected for a Fabian Marcaccio were Canadian Art,” Justina M. Baren (Toronto: Art Gallery “Form and Improv,” in in Epistrophe, 51. that is often focused on urban interven- Princeton University Press, as the Olga Korper Gallery signi!cant AGO commis- included in the AGO’s Barnicke Art Gallery (2002; of Ontario, 2007), 72. Epistrophe: Wall Paintings by tions and proposals for public art that fully 2012), 22. in Toronto. Other notable sion. Along with Thomasos, Swing Space Transforma- online). Denyse Thomasos [11] Gaëtane Verna, acknowledge indigenous legacies and awards include the Canada artists Karen Henderson, tion commission. Ben [7] Portis, interview with the (Lennoxville: Foreman Art “Acknowledgements,” in [2] Ibid. 43, 50. Council Millennium Grant Ingrid Calame, Julian Opie, Portis, interview with the [6] Ben Portis, “Denyse author, 18 March 2013. Gallery of Bishop’s Epistrophe, 6. contemporary First Nations.

SHORT FUSE FUSE / 36 – 4 Decolonial Aesthetics SHORT FUSE / INGRAM / MCKENZIE 8 9 self-proclaimed imperial right to name and create (constructed and artificial) identities by means either of silencing or trivialization. Decolonial The embodied daily life experience of decolonial processes within the matrix of modernity defeats the solitude and the search for order that permeate the fears of postmodern and altermodern industrial societies. Decoloniality and decolonial aesthetics are instrumental in confronting a world overflowed Aesthetics with commodities and information that invade the living space of consumers and confine their creative and imaginative potential. Within different genealogies of re-existence, artists Modernity-Coloniality Working have questioned the role and the name that have been assigned to them. They are aware of the confinement that Euro-centered Group of the Transnational concepts of art and aesthetics have imposed on them. They have engaged in transnational identities-in-politics, revamping identities Decolonial Institute that have been discredited in modern systems of classification and their invention of racial, sexual, national, linguistic, religious and economic hierarchies. They have removed the veil from the A transmodern world has emerged, reconfiguring hidden histories of colonialism and have rearticulated these the past 500 years of coloniality and its aftermath — narratives in spaces of modernity such as the white cube and its modernity, postmodernity and altermodernity. A remarkable affiliated branches. They are dwelling in the borders, sensing in feature of this transformation is the creativity in/from the non- the borders, doing in the borders, they have been the propellers

Western world and its political consequences — independent of decolonial transmodern thinking and aesthetics. Decolonial thoughts and decolonial freedoms in all spheres of life. Decolo- transmodernities and aesthetics have been delinking from all niality of knowledge and being, two concepts introduced by the talks and beliefs of universalism, new or old, and in doing so have modernity-coloniality working group in 1998, are encountering been promoting a pluriversalism that rejects all claims to a truth the decoloniality of aesthetics in order to join different genealo- without quotation marks. In this regard, decolonial transmoder- gies of re-existence in artistic practices all over the world. nity has endorsed identities-in-politics and challenged identity Decolonial aesthetics and decoloniality in general politics and the self-proclaimed universality of altermodernity. have joined the liberation of sensing and sensibilities trapped Creative practitioners, activists and thinkers continue by modernity and its darker side: coloniality. Decoloniality to nourish the global flow of decoloniality towards a transmodern endorses interculturality (which has been conceptualized by and pluriversal world. They confront and traverse the divide of organized communities) and delinks from multiculturalism the colonial and imperial difference invented and controlled (which has been conceptualized and implemented by the State). by modernity, dismantling it, and working towards “living in Muticulturalism promotes identity politics, while interculturality harmony and in plenitude” in a variety of languages and decolonial promotes transnational identities-in-politics. Multicultural- histories. The worlds emerging with decolonial and transmodern ism is managed by the State and affiliated NGOs, whereas political societies have art and aesthetics as a fundamental interculturality is enacted by communities in the process of source. These artists are operating in what can be seen as the delinking from the imaginary of the State and of multicultural- conceptual legacies of the Bandung Conference (1955). ism. Interculturality promotes the re-creation of identities that Bandung united 29 Asian and African countries were either denied or acknowledged first but in the end were and was followed by the formation of the Non-Aligned Move- silenced by the discourse of modernity, postmodernity and ment in 1961, which included former Eastern Europe and now altermodernity. Interculturality is the celebration by Latin America. The legacy of the Bandung Conference was the border-dwellers of being together in and beyond the border. possibility of imagining other worlds beyond capitalism and/ Decolonial transmodern aesthetics are intercultural, or communism, to engage in the search and building of a third inter-epistemic, inter-political, inter-aesthetical and inter- way, neither capitalist nor communist, but decolonial. Today spiritual but always from perspectives of the global south and this conceptual legacy has been taken beyond the sphere of the former-Eastern Europe. Massive migration from the former the state to understand creative forms of re-existence and East and the global south to the former Western Europe (today autonomy in the borders of the modern/colonial world. the European Union) and to the United States have transformed The goal of decolonial thinking and doing is to the subjects of coloniality into active agents of decolonial continue re-inscribing, embodying and dignifying those ways delinking. “We are here because you were there” is the reversal of living, thinking and sensing that were violently devalued or of the rhetoric of modernity; transnational identities-in-politics demonized by colonial, imperial and interventionist agendas are a consequence of this reversal because they challenge the as well as by postmodern and altermodern internal critiques.

Editor’s note: This text is Eistrup, Marina Grzinic, an abridged version of the Pedro Lasch, Alanna original, published and Lockward, Tanja Ostojic, available on the website Walter Mignolo, Teresa of the Transnational María Díaz Nerio, Miguel Decolonial Institute. The Rojas-Sotelo, Ovidiu signatories of the manifesto Tichindeleanu, Nelson are Raúl Moarquech Maldonado Torres and Ferrera Balanquet, Dalida Rolando Vásquez. María Ben!eld, Michelle

FUSE / 36 – 4 Decolonial Aesthetics

10 11 Decolonial Aesthetics

13 Extra-Rational Aesthetic Action and Cultural Decolonization

For several years I have remained disturbed tyranny of the beautiful, how aesthetic excellence constrains the expression of dissent. by three aesthetic actions: Rebecca Belmore’s The goal of decolonization is to bring “about the yell as a prelude to a panel discussion; Guillermo repatriation of Indigenous land and life.” [2] In Canada, this is a Gómez-Peña’s threat to decapitate a woman permanently unfinished project. Canadians believe that they live in a postcolonial country, more or less free from British rule since " during a work of performance art; and Terrance (top left) 1867. But First Nations, Inuit and Métis remain in a colonial state; Guillermo Gómez-Peña Houle’s presentation of his naked, fleshy belly in most of our lands are occupied, and our lives governed by an and James Luna, invasive authority — Canada. And Canadians are not leaving any time La Nostalgia Remix photographs and performances. Most days the (March 2011). images, sounds, thoughts, sensations and feelings soon. As a result, decolonial theory and practice developed in truly Performance. postcolonial countries needs to be adapted to suit the lived reality Produced by engendered by these scenes course through my of this place. In the absence of self-determination, and the restora- Heather Haynes. Copresented by mind and body as a prickly trickle undisturbed by tion of Native territories to Indigenous stewardship, artists, Tribe, Neutral Ground, analysis. Other times I slow the flow and attempt curators, educators and other cultural workers engaged in what and Sâkêwêwak. they describe as decolonization, are usually doing something a Image courtesy of to discover why they stick around, what they want. little different. Particularly among the non-Indigenous, decoloni- Ian Campbell and the artists. These sticky memories will not leave and I cannot zation is never imagined as the actual withdrawal of Canada from assimilate them, so we negotiate a cohabitation Indigenous territories. It is sometimes performed as activism (top right) promoting treaty rights, but it is usually expressed as a pedagogical Terrance Houle, agreement. Art’s power as a spur to personal and detail from Remember in Grade… enterprise, a cultural decolonization that consists of practices (2004) in First Nations Now, collective transformation is slight: a caressing se- ranging from assimilation to adaptation to productive coexistence. Burnaby Art Gallery, BC. Cultural decolonization is the perpetual struggle to make Image courtesy of Jarusha Brown duction or a sliver working its way under the skin. and the artist. both Indigenous and settler peoples aware of the complexity of our What follows is an exploration of the role of nonpeda- shared colonial condition, and how this legacy informs every (bottom) gogical artworks in cultural decolonization; in particular, aesthetic person and institution in these territories. The soft hope is that Rebecca Belmore, prior to manifestations that go for the gut before the mind, the senses education will lead to improvements in the lives of Aboriginal closing panel discussion for “Contemporary Indigenous rather than the sensible. Works that are fuelled by an extra-rational people — as Canadians. The more radical desire is that Canadians Performance Art: Where it’s aesthetic that endeavours through visceral and intuitive means to and their institutions will Indigenize. Due to its oxymoronic paradox, Been, Where it’s At and Where provoke change in other bodies — to alter moods, attitudes, disposi- cultural decolonization in a still colonial Canada is not about it’s Going” at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery tions and sensibilities first, in the hope that arguments, reason, working toward a classical postcolonial state, where the colonizers (Lethbridge), judgment and minds will follow. Of particular interest is the special sail home, dragging their institutions behind them, but toward a 9 May 2012. role of the artist not as teacher or perpetuator of customary culture, noncolonial society in which Aboriginal nations and settlers share Image courtesy of Mountain Standard Time Festival but as provocateur, an unreliable but necessary agent who plays Indigenous territories. This sort of decolonization is about First and the artist. between and among disciplines and cultures to create startling Nations, Inuit and Métis restoring and strengthening our different non-beautiful, needful disruptions, and to build hybrid possibilities ways of knowing and being, and requiring our guests to unlearn that resist containment by either colonial designs or Indigenous and disengage from their colonial habits. Cultural decolonization in traditionalism. Before getting to these works, the concept of the Canadian context is about at once unsettling settlers and, “decolonial aesthetics” [1] needs some fine-tuning if it is to make ironically, helping them to adapt, to better settle themselves as sense in the Canadian context. And we should also consider the noncolonial persons within Indigenous spaces. More ambitiously,

[1] “Decolonial Aesthetics (I),” Indigeneity, Education & Society 1, Transnational Decolonial Institute no.1 (2012; online). Quotation (22 May 2011; online). from the abstract.

[2] Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, “Decolonization is not a David Garneau Metaphor,” Decolonization:

Decolonial Aesthetics

15 it is also about First Nations, Inuit and Métis people becoming people desire and perform at least part of their lives in excess of of all members of that class. All these objects — from the point of other than European. There is a tendency in decolonial aesthetics themselves neither through forced assimilation into non- the instrumental. view of the dominant gaze — embody difference, but few posit a to essentialize nondominant cultural contributions and to find value Indigenous modes, nor by retreating to a reconstructed, anachro- However, the weakness of beauty as a tool of decoloni- critique. Specific resistance, pointed critical engagement with only in what they are thought to have possessed prior to contact/ nistic Indigenous cultural purity, but by struggling to make new zation, or any other form of political use, is that it is a poor vehicle power, is rarely perceptible (to the colonial gaze) in traditional colonization. And those attributes are constructed as the lacks of ways of being Indigenous within the complex of the contemporary for conceptual content and critical engagement. Differences and practices. Those objects are held within their community’s circuit of Western ideology and imperialism. If the Canadian branch of this negotiations of Aboriginal/settler/international Indigenous identities. dissent from the dominant order are tolerated, even celebrated, if meaning and are designed to perpetuate the identity and struc- movement is managed by “Eurocentric” Canadians (no matter how Most cultural decolonizing work in Canada is pedago- they are attractively adorned and remain incomprehensible. What tures of the society they belong to, not deconstruct them. Reviving reformed), this looks less like a new turn than as just another cycle gical. It seeks to educate people and to help them gain the tools separates beautiful art from, for example, illustration or essay, is its customary practices is noncolonial practice. Decolonial practice is a in a continuous revolution in Western art, thought and sentiment to teach themselves. A popular way to decolonize minds is to availability to multiple and even contrary interpretations, and its more direct challenge to colonial habits. since the Romantics: disenchanted with the society of their fathers, introduce settlers to their hosts’ ways of knowing and being. This resistance to didacticism. From a political point of view, beauty is Emphasizing cultural revival is to claim the reproduction Western artists seek personal and cultural renewal, re-enchantment is usually done gently in a safe environment and in translation. This unreliable. Beautiful works of art perform, display and embody of a static, prior moment as the site of authenticity, rather than from the work and lives of those supposedly uncontaminated by is a very reasonable approach. It is rational, polite and sound worldviews but they do not explain them. The fact that it is possible recognizing the complexity of Aboriginal adaptation during coloni- their patrimony, the Indigenous. pedagogy. However, it is less transformative than immersion in to read anything politically is not the same as claiming that that thing zation and the fact that both settlers and Indigenous peoples have A preference for intellection, for thinking, for scepticism difference. Immersion is a shock to the mind through the senses. is the best means to stimulate social action. If we want to design been transformed by their entangled histories. Room needs to be and experimentation is not the genetic inheritance of European Its weakness as a tool of decolonization, though, is that it can be effective decolonizing tools from art, we ought to look beyond made, especially due to the continuous nature of Canadian colonial- peoples alone. There are Cree philosophers and Anishinabeg overwhelming and provoke retreat and entrenchment. Between sensual allure alone. Beauty represses discordant human experi- ism, to recognize our mutual adaptations, our métissage, and to scientists, German mystics and Hungarian witches. Reason is not a these two approaches is a wide space for art. ence. While it is right and good that most works of contemporary make this the basis of a significant part of decolonial strategizing. cultural attribute of the West alone, and spirituality and other forms Art is a strange supplement. It is not essential to our but customary First Nations art are beautiful, we have different In addition to recovering and supporting traditional of extra-rationalism are found in every culture. These are human survival but is integral to our humanity. It is the ornament, the expectations of art, for example, about residential schools made by Indigenous cultural practices, the other “ways of being” that the qualities. European colonialism was as much fuelled by a desire to flourish, the extra effort, the unpredictable addition, the unneces- survivors. Robert Houle’s recent paintings of his residential school Transnational Decolonial Institute, and others promoting decolonial save souls as it was motivated by material greed. Western cultures sary necessity. Good art is not always good design. Unrestrained experiences are rough, sketchy and unlovely, and bring the viewer by craft, art can so embellish an ordinary function as to make it a little closer to truth and empathy than visually pleasing images of useless; render a vessel, for instance, so beautiful that we feel the the same events ever could. Beautiful works of art are utopic need to protect it from its intended service. Art is the site of spaces that refuse the ugly, painful and unresolved. The discipline intolerable research, the laboratory of odd ideas, of sensual and of the beautiful and the formally excellent is often used to repress intuitive study, and of production that exceeds the boundaries of unpleasant and dissenting truths (under the claim of quality), and is conventional disciplines, protocols and imaginaries. Art is a display regularly employed to exclude those whose cultural practices are of surplus, of skill, ingenuity, knowledge, discipline, time, labour deemed outside of the dominant aesthetic regime. and wealth. It embroiders status, disguises corruption and cele- As this issue of FUSE attests (and perhaps, indeed, brates power. But art is also the stage where other surplus finds much of the magazine’s oeuvre), there is a shift in contemporary expression. It can be a way for the marginalized, refused and art and cultural studies from a taste for objects to a preference for repressed to return. performance; from artworks to aesthetic practices; from criticism to Few are immune to what beauty stirs in us. Beautiful reception; from private intellection and toward the sensual and nature stimulates a pleasure that defies reason and seems to socially engaged. And some artists, curators and others committed embody timeless being apart from ideology. In some it evokes the to social justice see potential tools for decolonizing practices in spiritual. Even materialists are arrested by nature. While they do this turn. For example, the Transnational Decolonial Institute’s not look for metaphysical authorship, they too are awed by the multiauthored manifesto, “Decolonial Aesthetics (I),” explains that order, complexity and beauty of natural processes that exist “the goal of decolonial thinking and doing is to continue re- independent of human hands and consciousness. Formal excel- inscribing, embodying and dignifying those ways of living, thinking lence in art is similarly inspiring. Many find in human-made things and sensing that were violently devalued or demonized by colonial, the expression of creative perfection, of a genius so wonderful, imperial and interventionist agendas as well as by postmodern and complete and novel that they feel compelled to ascribe its power altermodern internal critiques.” [3] to a source beyond the human. Others see in beautiful works of art This sounds like a thoughtful and just rebalancing. evidence of a humanness freed from the grasp of the conventional- However, this phrasing and way of thinking might actually inspire # izing power of a momentary regime. In the making and appreciation practices that perpetuate the modernist and colonial traditions they Terrance Houle, Saddle Up (2010). of art there is a space of difference, even resistance, where people seek to undermine. “Were” here assumes that we live in a post- Performance, Vancouver. can find refuge from the ideas that otherwise rule them. colonial environment. It also sets the site of authenticity in the past Image courtesy of Jarusha Brown and the artist. The feelings produced by the beautiful are extra-rational, tense and valorizes “ways of being” that are prior to contact. While noninstrumental and overwhelming. Beautiful art is nonproposi- cultural recovery projects are essential work for Indigenous people, aesthetics, wish to nurture are identified as the sensual, emotional and individuals are replete with contradictions, especially founda- tional. Such objects do not make logical claims that can be tested they are only one aspect of cultural decolonization, and concentra- and intuitive (aesthesis), [5] in opposition to intellection and the tionally conflicting beliefs about materialism and metaphysics. All for truth value. They show, they embody; they simply are. People ting on these practices may re-inscribe colonial Romanticism. instrumentalist preference of Euro-American and other imperial- this is to refresh the warning against essentializing colonized people preoccupied by a utilitarian worldview, who are possessed by the The revival of customary Aboriginal practices, because isms. While this may also signal a healthy reorientation, to the and projecting upon them only the attributes that are contrary to the attitude that sees real value only in an object or person’s use, can of its adherence to an alternative to the dominant code, is seen as Indigenous ear it sounds like familiar modernist dichotomous logic: current dominants’ preference. By troubling both categories just a find beauty disturbing. Beauty is subversive insofar as it makes us already and always a site of resistance. But this difference from the the West is logocentric, so the other must be passionate, sensual little, we can see that mainstream discourses are far from unified aware that there is more to life than utility, reason and pragma- dominant code is a general and diffused one. In terms of resistance and nonrational. While the manifesto authors do call for a poly- and that oppositional discourses are not merely the repressed tism. Beautiful human-made things are passionate evidence that and survivance, [4] what is true of one object is more or less true phony of difference, their preferred differences are those that seem supplements of the colonizer. If rationalism is flawed because it

[3] “Decolonial Aesthetics (I),” Postindian Survivance (Lincoln & [5] “Aesthesis or Aiesthesis, and sense expression, and is Transnational Decolonial Institute London: Nebraska University generally de!ned as ‘an closely connected to the processes (22 May 2011; online). Press, 1999). unelaborated elementary of perception.” “Decolonial awareness of stimulation, a Aesthetics,” Transnational [4] Gerald Robert Vizenor, ‘sensation of touch,’ is related Decolonial Institute (22 May Manifest Manners: Narratives on to awareness, sense experience 2011; online).

FEATURE FUSE / 36 – 4 Decolonial Aesthetics / GARNEAU

16 17 " Rebecca Belmore, prior to closing panel discussion for “Contemporary Indigenous Performance Art: Where it’s Been, Where it’s At and Where it’s Going” at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery (Lethbridge), 9 May 2012. Image courtesy of Mountain Standard Time Festival and the artist.

FEATURE FUSE / 36 – 4 Decolonial Aesthetics / GARNEAU

18 19 marginalizes feeling and sensation, aesthetic action based on This one began as more serious fun but soon edged toward horror. and bloody spectatorship that is barely suppressed by a veneer of anxiety about the naked body and sexuality, but especially with feeling and sensation is equally flawed in the other direction if it I felt like I was about to witness a murder. The possibility of contemporary “civilization.” But I also became aware of my own Native nakedness and sexuality. For Houle, his frequent near-nudity marginalizes intellection. Gut feelings do not always lead to right violence felt actual, not acted, and it generated a complex series of colonized state, my desire to correct and control this other. For me in performance is a form of purification — a being in the world as action. Feeling is often just embodied culture. Racism is a feeling; feelings then and now. I was surprised that some people shouted it was a profound physical revelation. While I knew these concepts you came into the world, naked — that was modeled for him by men so is sexism, homophobia, xenophobia and all deep values that for him to do it. I was surprised that I did not rush forward. I honestly as ideas prior to that night, this sight brought it home to and in the sweat lodge. [9] Houle’s exposure calls such colonial tastes guide us without thinking. We need internal and discursive dialogues felt that this stranger (to me) might not have been acting, that he through my body in a much more convincing and unforgettable and previous attempts to control Aboriginal flesh into question. I between intellection, intuition, sensation and feeling if we are to was possessed by the character he was playing. I wanted to fight way. It was deeply frightening. have been using the words “taste,” “preference” and “habit” when reduce the imbalance that comes from both over-rationalization and or flight in a non-thought response. I felt a visceral thrill and horror Terrance Houle’s thick belly is a feature of many of his examining colonial cultural strategies, and in order to denaturalize affective error. The teaching that Western-identified persons and that in my gut linked this event with the history of human violence photographs and performances. [8] It is not a pleasing sight. It is these opinions-backed-by-force. But Houle’s visceral actions institutions should learn from Aboriginal cultures is our emphasis on the sort of thing that in most settings within Western cultures is establish the point much more memorably. holism, not the exchange of one partial worldview for another. $ ! hidden away, because of the flesh’s association with sex and, in Belmore’s shout, Gómez-Peña’s threat and Houle’s belly In respect to the holistic attitude, I will conclude by Guillermo Gómez-Peña and James Luna, this case, because it is not attractive according to the conventions are aesthetic in that they trigger affective responses. They stimulate La Nostalgia Remix (March 2011). counterbalancing my intellection with an affective account of my Performance. Produced by Heather Haynes. of ideal male beauty. Non-disciplined bellies are to be concealed. the senses. They are not lovely gestures, nor quite sublime or ugly. experience of the three aesthetic actions alluded to in the introduc- Copresented by Tribe, Neutral Ground, and Sâkêwêwak Houle’s exposed paunch — and his disinterest in shame — contrasts Their power comes from their not-quite participation in a Kantian tion. In May of 2012, at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery (Lethbridge), Image courtesy of Ian Campbell and the artists. Aboriginal norms with the colonial normative that has had great aesthetic and their not-quite engagement in pedagogic theatre. [6] I moderated a discussion about contemporary Indigenous They are intuitive disruptions of the repressed real into the aesthetic performance art. Once the formalities were out of the way but arena. These unexplained, extra-rational, undisciplined irruptions of before the first question was asked of the panel — Adrian Stimson, not-quiteness intrigue the mental/sensual system more perplexingly Rebecca Belmore and Terrance Houle — Belmore stood before the than beauty or didacticism alone. They are mentally indigestible. crowd and let out an aural avalanche. It was a deep, sustained yell, Rather than teach, they encourage people to puzzle with them and a loud, long and unexpected monotone. Too low for a scream, too learn what they need of them. attenuated to be a shout, without an external stimulus to suggest it I think that what excites decolonial activists is less the was a reaction, a response, a reply. The soulful exhalation seemed radical possibilities of traditional Indigenous cultures than the deliberate but perhaps without deliberation; an unconscious radical possibilities of contemporary art. Few decolonial aesthetic intention instantly manifesting itself as an act in advance of mind activists advocate for the revival of traditional Indigenous cultural and meaning, a body responding to an unfamiliar environment, practices alone. Rather, they are enthusiastic about how Indigenous sounding the space, inhabiting it with breath and a vibrating ways of knowing and being can reinvigorate and rebalance Western presence before words. The muscular push forced chatter and aesthetic practices, even to the point of de-Westernizing them. thought from the crowded room, and cleared the space from While noncolonial practices, such as perpetuating traditional anything other than immediate visceral attention and presence. Indigenous cultural activities, are Indigenous, decolonial aesthetic It demanded a transition from a space of many to a moment of activism could not be similarly described. Especially in the Canadian/ unified attention and communion. Aboriginal context, decolonial activity is inscribed in relation to the The sound was outside of language. It was not an mainstream. It seeks to change the orientation of the discourse but utterance, a request, an assertion, a claim, a communication in any not eliminate it, reform individual members, not ship them off. It is ordinary sense. It broke with the protocols of such gatherings. a dialogue between Indigeneity and Canadianism in a field that It was shocking and yet because the issuing body seemed in belongs exclusively to neither. Traditional Indigenous cultures control, it did not seem symptomatic of distress or a prelude to before contact were, of course, neither decolonial nor activist. Art violence. Even so, the surprise of the sonic rip excited in me a as a form of decolonial activism is the result of contact; it emerges primal response. Only an act of will prevented me from rushing from cultures in collision. Decolonial aesthetics, then, is a hybrid; either forward or away. neither fully Indigenous nor Western. It is this new site of métissage A year earlier, 17 March 2011, at Neutral Ground that needs interrogation, not the fetishization of just one half of its (Regina), [7] I attended Guillermo Gómez-Peña and James Luna’s roots. Indigenous artists like Rebecca Belmore and Terrance Houle, La Nostalgia Remix, an assemblage of their performance pieces and a Chicano artist such as Guillermo Gómez-Peña, are bi-cultural, generated over fourteen years of collaboration. The night was creating work in the space where Indigenous/colonial culture chaotic, crowded and noisy, and engendered a tense participatory overlap. And what they produce there belongs to not-quite one fun that at several points tipped toward shock. In one scene, while space or the other, but to the third space of art. gripping the long hair of a young female audience member, a menacing Gómez-Peña, costumed as I remember it in an amalgam of Mayan and contemporary military gear, mimed to the audience whether he ought to decapitate her with his machete. The theatrical David Garneau (Métis) is a visual artist, curator and critical writer teaching at the fourth wall disappeared much earlier in the night when audience University of Regina. His work engages members were dressed in stereotypical cowboy and Indian and issues of nature, masculinity and other costumes and were invited to participate in various scenarios. contemporary Indigenous identities.

[6] On 4 and 9 May 2012, (hosted by Tanya Harnett). Mountain Standard Time James Luna (begun in the [8] Examples of Houle’s that covers his chest; Trails End/ (Vancouver, 2010) in which once [9] Email exchange between the Rebecca Belmore and Adrian The last day featured a formal Performative Art Festival Society’s early1990s). Copresented by near-naked self-portrait End Trails (2007) in which a again wearing only breechcloth, author and Terrance Houle, Stimson conducted concurrent discussion held at the Southern Making Way series. Tribe, Neutral Ground and photographs and performances near-naked Houle, dressed only in Houle stands on a fake, old-timey 10 June 2013. workshops titled Contemporary Alberta Art Gallery in which Sâkêwêwak, the performance I include: Remember in Grade… a breechcloth and roach, slouches movie set—complete with scaled Indigenous Performance Art — Belmore and Stimson were joined [7] La Nostalgia Remix was the attended was at Neutral Ground, (2004) in which an unhappy on a metal playground horse in down teepee—and invites Where it’s Been, Where it’s At & by Houle, moderated by the last in the Shame-man meets El 17 March 2011. Houle, standing in a backyard imitation of James E. Fraser’s passersby to photograph Where it’s Going… at the author. The events were produced Mexican’t series of performances garden, is dressed in shorts and iconic End of the Trail (1915); themselves with him, a real- University of Lethbridge by Tomas Jonsson for the by Guillermo Gómez-Peña and a paper bag, school project regalia and in the performance Saddle Up like Indian.

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20 21

Introduction body remains the object of violence, historical discourse and sociopolitical analysis, and is rarely acknowledged as a voice In the early twentieth-century modernist art of Latin or enunciation of visual epistemologies. In some cases, well- America, Indigeneity became a popular theme with which to respected and well-intended artists in Central America addressed strengthen nationalist discourse, one that relegated Indigenous the Indigenous plight in contemporary artworks, but the Indig- Indigeneity and being to a romantic past. With the emergence of a Latin American enous body remained a representation from the gaze of another. modernism, artists who had recently arrived from studies in It appears that unless an artwork figuratively depicts village life, Europe introduced avant-garde trends reminiscent of an Indi- customs or landscapes (subject matter that fits within an already genous aesthetics and style from centuries ago: flat spaces, accepted folkloric style), Indigenous artists are disqualified from art decentering of linear perspective, use of saturated bold colours, narratives as creators of contemporary or experimental art, much Decolonial Seeing anatomically abstracted bodies and overlapping representations less as contributors to an intellectual or philosophical artistic debate. of space. While these stylistic choices echoed preconquest modes Why is Indigeneity relegated to a romantic past, one that is to be of representation that were forcefully prohibited during coloniza- depicted, that serves to inspire artists and that is only to be seen, tion, they were now credited to European artists and labeled while Indigenous peoples in the region are continuously subjected cubism, expressionism, fauvism, surrealism and other European to racist and colonialist treatment, dehumanization and murder? in Contemporary Art of Guatemala modernist styles supposedly inspired by non-European cultures. Today in postwar Guatemala, the flourishing contempo- Simultaneously, while such artists celebrated and elevated rary art scene consists of several artists who employ experimental an imagined Indigenous identity, the brutal repression of Indig- art practices to address the current state and violence within a enous peoples residing in Central America was taking place under greater system of coloniality. I here refer to the term the Peruvian various government-led military campaigns. In depictions of these sociologist Aníbal Quijano introduced to describe a system of brutal periods — such as La Matanza, the massacre of 1932 led by domination in which the European/Western colonization of political General Hernández Martínez which left 30,000 Salvadorans dead, and economic spheres continues to be intricately linked to the or the more recent genocide in Guatemala led by ex-dictator Efraín colonization of knowledge systems at the world scale: Coloniality is Ríos Montt, which resulted in over 1,771 Mayan-Ixil killed and not synonymous with colonialism, though their historical relation- 29,000 displaced over his seventeen-month rule — the Indigenous ships are the same. Rather, coloniality extends beyond the removal

$% Fernando Poyón, Contra la Pared, 2006. Digital video still. Image courtesy of the artist.

# Fernando Poyón, Contra la Pared, 2006. Digital video still. Image courtesy of the artist.

Kency Cornejo

Decolonial Aesthetics

25 of previous colonial governments and administrations, and persists and through the body. [2] From an Indigenous embodiment of or experienced in the same way with a word or through text, as an ideological and epistemic tool of domination embedded in knowledge and cosmologies, they critique coloniality as they as it requires the full embodiment and presence of both the systems of power brought about by the history of colonization. [1] observe and live it in contemporary Guatemala. What issues do artist and the viewers. His gesture evoked the sound, and his For years, artists Benvenuto Chavajay, Sandra Monter- these artists bring to the forefront of decolonial visual thinking traditional dress and Indigenous body prescribed its meaning. roso, Ángel Poyón, Fernando Poyón and Antonio Pichillá have and critiques of coloniality? And how do these artists negotiate Chavajay’s action in El Grito draws from an ancient challenged colonialist notions of Indigenous peoples as mere contemporary art practices with a colonial legacy of Indigenous tradition of performance as an essential mode of cultural, spiri- silent sources of inspiration. Similar to what Walter Mignolo has repression, as they engage in creative decolonial strategies? tual and social representation and transmission of knowledge. termed a “locus of enunciation,” these artists create and articulate How do their works delink from Eurocentric notions of the From a Euro-American geopolitical perspective, however, grand knowledge from a specific place — a colonial wound — visually Indigenous body as one to be seen, and not as one who sees? histories of art locate performance art within a European and US tradition of experimental art in the 1960s. These histories of linear and unilateral development value concepts like originality, and identify Western art as authentic and all oth- ers as derivative. As a decolonial strategy, delinking from this $% Sandra Monterroso, Eurocentric perspective requires shifting the geographies of Rakoc Atin, 2008. reason, and rewriting from colonized, erased histories and ways Performance. of knowing to bring forth other possible points of departure. Image courtesy of the artist. While Chavajay engages in performance art as a sociopolitical critique, he also draws from an Indigenous tradition # that precedes twentieth-century Euro-American art movements, in Sandra Monterroso, Rakoc Atin, which the body, uses of space and the ephemeral entail a system 2008. Performance. Image courtesy of the artist. of knowledge production and transmission. Performance studies scholar Diana Taylor coined a pair of terms, the archive and the rep- ertoire, to elucidate how performance in the Americas, inclusive of its aesthetic and political aspects, can be understood as a system Corporal Critiques of Coloniality of knowledge. Unlike the archive (that is, memory and knowledge as it exists in documents, maps, bones, videos, film and anything Just this year, unprecedented in the Americas, the else resistant to change), the repertoire enacts embodied memory Guatemalan ex-dictator Efraín Ríos Montt was put on trial in (gestures, performances, orality, movement, dance) and includes a national court and found guilty of genocide for his deliberate ephemeral acts thought of as non-reproducible knowledge. [5] The attack on the Mayan-Ixil population. [3] The Truth and Reconcili- irreproducible testimonial embodiment of Chavajay’s protesting ation Commission reported that up to eighty percent of deaths scream (the repertoire), along with its visual documentation (the during the conflict were of Mayan Indigenous peoples, who were archive), challenges Western ways of knowing as solely textual, also raped, tortured and disappeared. Through earth scorching, and roots the performance in an epistemic system deriving from sacred lands and resources were destroyed, ensuring that those ancient Mesoamerican civilizations. From that geography of reason, who escaped direct military death still had very little chance of Chavajay evokes the thousands of visual and corporal screams that survival. And while the military rationalized killing Mayan children since colonization have resisted and condemned the prior geno- during the conflict by labeling them “consequential victims,” cides. El Grito therefore reveals that genocide within a neoliberal it is now known that government forces perceived Indigenous context is merely a contemporary manifestation of coloniality. children as “bad seeds,” directly ordering their execution. [4] Along these lines, in a performance titled Rakoc Atin But what happens when these “bad seeds” grow anyway? (2008), the artist Sandra Monterroso occupied the public space In the capital city of Guatemala, an Indigenous man in front of the Supreme Court of Guatemala both as condemna- dressed as the elders of his Mayan-Tz’utujil community interven- tion and healing process. During her performance, she wrote ed in the chaotic urban space, making all nearby stop and take out in large scale the words rakoc atin with sea salt on the notice of his performance, El Grito (The Scream, 2002). The artist, ground. In Maya Q’eqchi’, rakoc atin means “hacer justicia,” or Benvenuto Chavajay, paced back and forth on the busy sidewalk “to make justice.” Under Ríos Montt’s rule, military forces would while swinging a matraca around and above his head. With blatantly dispose of Indigenous peoples by throwing them from the matraca, a religious instrument and symbol of Guatemalan helicopters into the Pacific Ocean. [6] Some bodies returned with identity for the artist, Chavajay echoed the sound of gunshots — a the tide, but most were never to be seen again, preventing both very familiar sound to his community during the armed conflict. a proper burial ceremony and rituals of mourning. By using sea By projecting this sound onto the city and its pedestrians he salt, Monterroso condemned the inhumane military practice, evoked a memory, reminding citizens of the 36-year war and while simultaneously calling on the significance of salt in many of all its unresolved injustices. Chavajay evaded the limits of a Indigenous rituals and practices of healing and cleansing. sound associated with repression, and with his bodily presence As the performance progressed, various intravenous transformed this sound into a visual and corporal scream of machines, normally used to transfer blood, medicine or drugs resistance, of condemnation — one that cannot be expressed into a main artery as a form of medical treatment, slowly leaked

Editor's note: Resounding thanks (paper presented at the Colonial Difference,” South [3] For information on the children “was not a secondary “internal enemies,” a term de!ned Racism, Genocide, Citizenship Duke University Press, 2003). are due to our partners e-fagia for conference Coloniality and Its Atlantic Quarterly 101, no. 1 developments of the trial and links casualty of state terror, but a clear in the 1983 Manual of (Lanham: Lexington Books, their generous sponsorship of this Disciplinary Sites, Binghamton (2002): 56–96; and Mignolo, to other sites, see www. object of destruction within the Counter-Subversive War by the 2012), 103. [6] See Guatemala, Memory of feature article. University, NY, April 1999). Local Histories/Global Designs: riosmontt-trial.org context of genocide.” Mayan Center for Military Studies of the Silence: Tz'inil Na'tab'al, Report Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, babies, toddlers and children were Guatemala Army. See Egla [5] Diana Taylor, The Archive and of the Commission for Historical [1] Aníbal Quijano, “Coloniality [2] See Walter Mignolo, “The and Border Thinking (New Jersey: [4] As Martínez Salazar observes, de!ned by the state as “bad Martínez Salazar, Global the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Clari!cations, Conclusions and of Power and Its Institutions” Geopolitics of Knowledge and the Princeton University Press, 2000). the death and killings of Mayan seeds” for being children of the Coloniality of Power in Guatemala: Memory in the Americas (Durham: Recommendations (2000).

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26 27 liquid onto the words, consequently diluting them. This subtle Objects and the Underside of Modernity The stones, moreover, are infused with a definition of watering down of the phrase rakoc atin spoke to the fact that art and the sacred that delinks from Western definitions of art. when victims or their families reported crimes of violence in Away from the city, in more remote areas of Guate- In the Tz’utujil community the word art or arte in the colonizing their Native languages to police authorities, these reports often mala, artists are using object-based art to address the violence Spanish language emerged only fifty years ago. [13] For artists went undocumented due to a lack of translators — not to mention of modernity on Indigenous communities, linked to coloniality like Chavajay, the closest equivalent to art in Tz’utujil is the sacred, all those who never reported at all. The same occurred during as the underside of modernity. San Pedro La Laguna is one of which implies a notion of valorization and significance applicable a peace process that sought testimonies to initiate healing and several Indigenous towns located at the edge of Lake Atitlán especially to nature, from the tallest trees to the smallest rocks. reconciliation processes. In simulating a disintegration of words in the department of Sololá, Guatemala. [8] It is home to the [14] This notion extends beyond mere belief and into a daily by a machine intended to keep people alive and to heal, Monter- Tz’utujil community, one of twenty-one ethnic groups in the praxis and relation with the Mother Earth based on respect, roso implicated language not only within the power of coloniality, country that make up the ancient Mayan civilization. Today, an sustenance and reciprocity. The Indigenous relation to nature but also with the failures of a symbolic healing process designed influx of foreign travelers has turned the town into a tourist site continues to contrast and challenge the dominant ill-treatment to only superficially maintain a people and culture alive. with an overflow of backpackers, hostels and restaurants run and violent disregard of nature prominent in the coloniality of # by foreign retirees. [9] While the town is known for its strong power, capitalism and Western ways of living — especially as they Benvenuto Chavajay, Suave artistic community (in particular, paintings of quotidian life in entail the destruction of Indigenous lands, sacred plants and, of Chapina series, 2007–2008. Object, intervened rocks. a traditional folklore style made for tourist consumption), a course, bodies. The sacredness of life in nature’s objects, as the Image courtesy of the artist. new generation departs from this artistic tradition to engage most accurate definition of art, challenges the notion of art- in practices still rooted in Indigenous ways of seeing. [10] commodity while maintaining a fundamental spiritual connection Chavajay, who resides in both the city and San Pedro to visual culture and life that has survived for over 500 years. La Laguna, links the environmental deterioration of the lake to the By contrast, the Kaqchikel artist Ángel Poyón, who also arrival of a foreign modernity. In his Suave Chapina (2007) series, makes object-based artworks, is more interested in conveying the artist transforms rocks, stones and other objects from Lake the failures of modernity for Guatemala. Poyón is from San Juan Atitlán by attaching to them the plastic straps of the popular Suave Comalapa, a town inhabited by the Indigenous Maya Kaqchikel Chapina brand of sandal. The brand’s name merges suave, “soft,” located in the department of Chimaltenango, and widely known and chapina, the informal name used to refer to a Guatemalan for a tradition of folklore painting that extends back to the 1940s woman. As Chavajay has noted about plastic: “This material with the master Andrés Curruchich. [15] In Estudios del fracaso marked Guatemalan society, above all the Indigenous world. With medidos en tiempo y espacio (Studies in Failure Measured in Time " its arrival everything changed. Modernity inplasticated our culture.” and Space, 2008), Poyón recovers old-fashioned twin-bell alarm Benvenuto Chavajay, [11] This brand of sandal became both an inexpensive commodity clocks by eliminating the numbers (references to Western concepts El Grito, 2002. of desire and an alternative to going barefoot. While the lightweight of time) and replacing them with paths of movement, migration Performance. material of the sandal should project comfort and convenience, and displacement. The lines — evoking one of the most notable Image courtesy of the artist. Chavajay has replaced the “sole” of the sandal with the natural modernist artists in the West, Piet Mondrian — offer a contradictory rocks from San Pedro La Laguna, bringing forth the weight, heavi- journey, with overlaps, repetitions and an unclear directionality that ness and plight of the Tz’utujil community. This juxtaposition and proposes an oppositional framework of time and space brought relation between materials, in which plastic represents a foreign on by the failures of modernity. As the Guatemalan curator Rosina modernity and the rocks represent the lake and the Tz’utujil, goes Cazali has argued, “these studies suggest a useless pathway, as beyond a critique of environmental destruction of land brought was the project of modernity.” [16] The vintage clocks proposition about by the tourist invasion of San Pedro. Modernity as inplas- an element of nostalgia to the passing of time and movements tication of Indigenous culture summons in the artist’s own terms in space, but in the context of Guatemala, nostalgia is offset by what scholars have noted to be the underside of modernity. [12] recent memories of forced migration — either rural to urban, or That is, the conquest of the Americas was the constitutive element across national borders, as a result of the Guatemalan conflict. of modernity, and coloniality its counterpart —both mutually depen- Like the Suave Chapina series, Ángel Poyón’s Estudios del fracaso dent phenomena. The series, however, is not a rejection of moder- medidos en tiempo y espacio exposes the relation between an nity but rather a reassertion of resistance and survival. Chavajay imposed modernity and its underside, coloniality. These nonfigura- recognizes in much of his work the process of transculturation so tive, object-based works bring forth current issues of environment, pertinent to the Americas, but maintains a Tz’utujil epistemic con- space and migration; but unlike in the traditional style of painting This becomes all the more relevant considering nection through the base and sole of the artworks—pieces of earth practiced by local artists in their hometowns, Chavajay and Poyón that ten days after the historic guilty verdict for the US-backed that have existed for centuries as witness to Tz’utujil journeys. eliminate representations of Indigenous bodies, allowing the ideas military dictator Ríos Montt, by which he was sentenced to eighty years for genocide and crimes against humanity, the Guatemala [7] As these events are developing, community becomes more chunches no los transformo. Los [15] As a young boy, when [16] Rosina Cazali, Migraciones: Constitutional Court annulled the jury’s verdict. [7] Chavajay and we have yet to see the outcome of present. See Maria Victoria Véliz, trans!guro. No hay nada que Curruchich worked as a farmer, he Mirando Al Sur (Ciudad de Monterroso, who embrace Indigenous identities and consider the annulment. “Seguir Hacia Delante, Volver la hacerles,” interview by Beatriz acquired an interest in painting Mexico: Ministerio de Asuntos their actions decolonial strategies, bring the issue of race to the Mirada hacia Atrás” in Suave Colmenares, El Periódico (12 May objects and local scenes onto Exteriores y de Cooperación, [8] For more on the Indigenous Chapina: Benvenuto Chavajay 2013; online at www.elperiodico. feathers, wood, jícaras (gourds), AECID, 2009. Exhibition forefront of Indigenous genocide in Guatemala. Through their communities surrounding Lake (Ciudad de Guatemala: Centro com). and later cloth panels. Once catalogue). performances, they recognize how sound and language remain Atitlán, see Morna Macleod, Cultural Metropolitano, 2007. “discovered” by a local priest, he implicated in coloniality, and intervene in public spaces with their Santiago Atitlán, Ombligo Del Exhibition pamphlet). [12] See Aníbal Quijano, gained international recognition bodies to enact visual and corporal screams of denunciation. Universo Tz'utujil: Cosmovisión Y “Coloniality of Power, Eurocen- and went on to exhibit in the Ciudadanía (Guatemala: [10] See Roberto Cabrera Padilla, trism, and Latin America” in United States, initiating the Their interventions can be understood as corporal critiques of Oxfam Novib, 2000). “Artistas Guatemaltecos Nepantla: Views from South 1, tradition in Comalapa, where he contemporary systems that continue to uphold notions of race, Kaqchikeles y Tz’utujiles: Una no. 3 (2000): 533–580. taught others his style of painting. superiority and inferiority to deem a group of people nonhuman. # [9] Away from the shore, or what Nueva Visión” in Otra Mirada: Today there are hundreds of artists art historian Maria Victoria Véliz Atitlán + Comalapa (Guatemala: [13] Benvenuto Chavajay, interview in Comalapa, including his Antonio Pichillá, There are no representations of Indigenous bodies here; rather, has called the “downtown” of San Embajada de Mexico, 2007. by the author, San Salvador, El daughter María Curruchich along Ku’kul’kan, 2011. Pedro, and up the steep slope of Exhibition pamphlet). Salvador, 29 May 2011. with several women artists, who the active presence of the artists’ own bodies are decolonial Installation. the volcano, tourists become less continue to paint in the tradition of gestures of embodiment and knowledge, not represented via the Image courtesy of Maria visible and the Tz’utujil [11] Benvenuto Chavajay, “A los [14] Ibid. daily scenes through oil painting. gaze of another, but enunciated and spoken in public space. Victoria Véliz and the artist.

FEATURE FUSE / 36 – 4 Decolonial Aesthetics / CORNEJO

28 29 and discourses in their works to convey Tz’utujil and Kaqchikel takes the right fist to the heart as a gesture of guilt and remorse. apocalypse, it in fact indicates an end to a Mayan era and the understandings of modernity/coloniality. This way of seeing ma- Poyón associates this act with being “backed against the wall,” as beginning of another rooted in Mayan cyclical concepts of time, terializes through a resignification of objects, which in the case of the title indicates. In removing all contexts and isolating the act and in opposition to the linear notions of time in Western thought. Chavajay, reinscribes Tz’utujil ways of seeing the sacred in the earth. of self-blame as the focus of the video, the artist highlights that Poyón’s Contra la Pared video raises the question of an there is no justification for the confession, portraying the robotic internalized colonial mentality made possible through religious Spirituality and the Hidden gesture of guilt as an internalized colonialist act. Rooted in the conquests and the persistence of coloniality; from extreme imposition of Christianity as a method for colonization, and specifi- impoverished conditions to the lack of education resources, to Studies have shown that Indigenous artists trained cally the slaughter of those who refused conversion, Poyón points rape, torture and genocide, the Guatemalan government constantly in Western styles of art during the colonial period incon- to this self-blame as a forced yet internalized mode of survival evades responsibility for the plight of Indigenous peoples and spicuously incorporated symbols and imagery of Indigenous to coloniality. The lack of facial expression, the deliberately hidden attributes responsibilities to notions of ignorance, uncleanliness significance unknown to the Spanish colonizers and priests eyes, and the mechanical manner in which the women repeat and promiscuity, resorting to colonialist racial discourse for who supervised the works. While Christian religious practices the gesture, conveys a dissociation from the prayer’s meaning impunity. Pichillá, from a direct Tz’utujil spirituality, points to the were taken on, they were also subverted to incorporate and that highlights a difference between performing a compromise hidden and the sacred as an entry point to resistance and survival preserve Indigenous cosmologies and spirituality. [17] Today, in order to evade death and that of complete submission. In for an Indigenous episteme, with a critical awareness that like this manner, the artist reveals the role of Christianity, extending Christianity and modernity, disciplines of Western knowledge have from initial colonization into contemporary coloniality manifested sought entry into Indigenous cosmologies under the guise of through self-blame. For Indigenous communities, the concepts of objective research. [21] Key to the concept of the hidden is that blame and self-blame remain prevalent concerns considering the which is being protected: Indigenous cosmologies and ways of continued lack of outside accountability for the oppression and knowing, which have historically become the desires of Western # injustices experienced by Indigenous peoples, and in particular by studies. In conversation, Poyón’s video and Pichillá’s installations Angel Poyón. Estudios del fracaso medidos en tiempo y espacio, 2008. women as the main victims of physical and psychological violence. make a clear distinction between the role of religion in colonial- Object, intervened clock. Conversely, Tz’utujil artist Antonio Pichillá departs from ity and the protection of spirituality as a decolonial strategy. Image courtesy of Andrés Asturias/RARA a Mayan-Tz’utujil spirituality in his installations and videos. In the and the artist. large-scale installation titled Ku’kul’kan (2011), Pichillá utilizes Conclusion massive amounts of red cloth in a sculptural representation of the ancient fire serpent god Quetzalcoatl. The serpentine form is made In Mesoamerica, visuality has been a carrier and up of a series of large knots, and the sculpture is placed across the transmitter of histories, identities, thoughts, scientific discoveries wall to simulate its movement. Visually, Pichillá works with the con- and concepts of time and space even before coloniality/moder- cept of the knots or bultos (bundles) in relation to a strict Tz’utujil nity became the global model of power. It is no surprise, then, spirituality and energy. In the Tz’utujil community of San Pedro La that in an attempt to eliminate a population’s ways of being, the # Laguna, the artist is also known as a spiritual guide (or what some colonization of ways of seeing would be yet another strategy for Antonio Pichillá, Lo Oculto, 2005. term a shaman) called upon by the community to heal individuals the repression of other bodies and cosmologies. This suggests Installation. Image courtesy of the artist. on matters of the spirit. Thus, his artistic practice explicitly departs that a decolonial approach to visuality, art and visual thinking from the notion of “experience from life” and into “life is spiritual.” requires an unveiling and decentering of Western perspectives [18] By incorporating knots into his installation, Pichillá embodies and their monopoly over meaning, beauty and art, and a visual notions of the body, spirit, mind and energy into the sacred. rewriting from a position of colonial difference. Recognizing Pichillá’s bultos, furthermore, allude to private, do- Indigenous visual theorization as part of ongoing political and mestic space as a reference to the safeguarding of the valuable artistic debates is key, and is distinct from addressing it as subject artists like Fernando Poyón and Antonio Pichillá depend less on and the sacred. This idea is present in the installation Lo Oculto matter, as has been common in Western art where the Indi- figurative associations to address the spiritual, instead using (The Hidden, 2005) consisting of two bultos in a triangular shelf. genous body is treated as a mere source of artistic inspiration. installation and video to critically reflect on the consequences Common in Tz’utujil homes, items of value are hidden in tied Belonging to the generation that the military govern- of Christianity for Indigenous peoples in Guatemala and to bundles, kept veiled for protection in various locations throughout ment termed “bad seeds,” and now to a so-called postwar Kency Cornejo is currently a PhD reinforce notions of an Indigenous spirituality in the present day. the home, or at times on the body. For Pichillá, in addition to the generation, these artists enact decolonial gestures, and create candidate in Art, Art History & Visual In the fifteen-second video Contra la Pared (Against sacred and domestic, knots are symbols of Tz’utujil aesthetics objects to convey decolonial ways of seeing, in the contemporary Studies at Duke University and holds an MA from UT Austin and a BA from UCLA. the Wall, 2006), Kaqchikel artist Fernando Poyón presents a and concepts of beauty, and recall the braided hair of an Indig- art of Guatemala. From visual/corporal screams and object-based Her dissertation, “Visual Disobedience: close-up shot of three Mayan women in their traditional dress. enous woman secured with cloth and knots as a visual sign of critiques of modernity and its underside, to the power of preserving The Geopolitics of Experimental Art in Poyón frames the lower half of the women’s faces while they speak attractiveness. [19] Gesture becomes equally important for the the sacred, these selected works are based on rigorous investiga- Central America, 1990–present,” explores words inaudible to viewers. The only sound heard is the classical artist as he compares the process of creating and unraveling a tion, on notions of the spiritual and in consideration of current the intersection between race, gender and Catholic hymn that plays throughout the duration of the video. knot (like covering and unraveling a bundle) to the continuous political issues. They reinforce the epistemic aspect of art that coloniality in the art of postwar Central America, and considers issues of violence, Once the camera zooms out, never showing the women’s faces cycle in life. In the process, one knot leads to another, like a goes beyond expression and into reflection and the production femicide, immigration and Central but expanding the frame to their torsos, one sees the women cycle of time that intersects states of knowing, being, and the of knowledge. As such, they reiterate that intellectually inspired American diasporas. Her work has repeating a gesture customary of the Catholic prayer I Confess to sacred, where an end is actually a beginning. [20] With this idea, creative works are not limited to an Indigenous romanticized received support from the Fulbright-Hays You. In the Spanish version of this prayer, to accompany the phrase Pichillá references the Mayan calendar and the Baktun 13 — while past, but are continuously present today, just as colonialist DDRA and the Ford Foundation. She has many inaccurately interpreted this as the Mayan prediction of designed and taught a course at Duke “por mi culpa, por mi culpa, por mi gran culpa” one repeatedly structures remain intact within current systems of power, dem- titled Art, Visual Culture & Politics in onstrating the need for decolonization as an ongoing project. Central America.

[17] For example, the pre- through the incorporation of Duke University Press, 2007); [19] Ibid. [21] See Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Columbian goddess Coatlicue pre-Columbian imagery in their and Guisela Latorre, Walls of Decolonizing Methodologies: was secretly worshipped via the artwork. For a study on this Empowerment: Chicana/o Indigenist [20] Ibid. Research and Indigenous Peoples sanctioned !gure of the Virgin of relation between spirituality and Murals of California (Austin: (London and New York: Zed Guadalupe. This imagery has Indigeneity in Chicana/o art, see University of Texas Press, 2008). Books Ltd, 1999). been especially central to Laura E. Pérez, Chicana Art: The Chicana/o artists in the United Politics of Spiritual and Aesthetic [18] Antonio Pichillá, interview by States who root their spirituality Altarities (Durham and London: the author, 29 November 2012.

FEATURE FUSE / 36 – 4 Decolonial Aesthetics / CORNEJO

30 31 violent assimilationist and ethnocidal tions about my relationship to place and are implicated can be uncovered. Further, policies. Fundamentally, this process of place making, given the violence of settler by harnessing the significant capacity for Addressing uncovering my settler families’ histories colonial practices. This, together with creative practice to generate productive (Scottish, English, Irish and Welsh) further explorations of my grandfather’s entry points for critical engagement with activated an unlearning of Canadian story in relation to the global movement contentious issues, the settler imaginary, national myths and encouraged a learning of people through several iterations of long stagnating in a self-imposed “narrative of my personal and familial privileges as imprint (2006 – 2010), led me to consider deficit,” [3] can be influenced to dislodge white settlers. the program of Indigenous displacement entrenched colonial attitudes and open up the Settler We are caught up in one another, we who The processes of unsettling my settler as intrinsically tied to the attainment of to the potential of decolonizing imperatives. live in settler societies, and our interrelation- identity and unsettling my conception of refuge and advancement on the part of ships inform all that these societies touch. home were significant both personally and those arriving and their descendants. Leah and Carla — We came to investi- professionally. I came to the realization that Drawing on these underpinnings, gations of our personal histories through —Scott Lauria Morgensen, Spaces in order for me to contribute in productive my art and research practices are directed discrete paths, and the immigration histo- Problem between Us: Queer Settler Colonialism and meaningful ways to the communities towards “the settler problem” as char- ries and lived experiences of our ancestors and Indigenous Decolonization that I lived and worked in I had a responsi- acterized by Roger Epp, Taiaiake Alfred, differ. However, we recognize that under- bility to clean up some colonial debris, as Paulette Regan and others. As such, my standing these personal histories, and it were. I conceive of my work as a settler work contends with settler resistance to thereby how our ancestors are implicated Strategies of Settler scholar to participate in the dismantling and involvement in decolonizing processes, in the colonial project, is crucial in recogniz- of nationalist narratives that bolster and and renders counternarratives that seek ing both how we continue to benefit from Responsibility and Decolonization perpetuate white settler dominance and to disrupt dominant understandings of colonial policies, and what our responsibili- complacency in colonization. I do so settler identity as articulated within the ties are with regards to decolonial work. through activating a politic of remembrance, history and contemporary conditions of As so many non-Indigenous Canadians which in the context of settler colonialism settler colonialism in the Canadian context. cling to the perception of impunity derived Leah Decter and Carla Taunton focus on the strategies that we have undertaken and speak from can mean, but is not limited to, the recogni- It is carried out through a practice that from dominant narratives of Canadian the grounding of our respective positionalities. We begin by framing tion and unearthing of seemingly invisible intertwines self-reflexive creative produc- identity, it is important to recognize that the some background about our practices and discussing how we each colonial agendas, apparatus and narratives. tion, Indigenous-settler collaboration, complicity of our ancestors in the colonial came to work through a critical settler lens. critical intercultural social engagement project is not necessarily dependent on Leah — In my practice as an intermedia and an operational strategy that positions their having been active within mecha- As white settler women we are benefi- Carla — The development of my critical settler lens be- artist and in the research I am undertak- settlers as the subject under scrutiny. [2] nisms readily understood as colonial in ciaries of colonialism and as such we recognize gan through my work as a non-Indigenous scholar of Indigenous ing as I begin a PhD, it has been crucial By centering colonial truths with respect mainstream portrayals of Canadian history. our privileged identities in Canada. Through our art histories and anticolonial discourses. During my PhD course for me to develop critical examinations to settler culpability, colonial myths can Canadian immigration policy has an work, which focused on Indigenous women performance artists, of both personal and historical narratives begin to be unravelled, and the ways we indisputable history of supporting white artistic, academic and writing practices we both I had a transformative moment of settler self-reflexivity. I realized in order to articulate colonial truths that pursue personal and professional decolonizing through engagement with the artists’ stories and performative counter dominant mythologies, and to $% processes, actively working in alliance with research, that in order to productively contribute to Indigenous art analyze their excision from the mainstream Leah Decter, histories, to social justice and to decolonization I had to first start national imaginary. I came to the impera- Castor Canadensis: Provokas (2013). Indigenous decolonization. Drawing on Paulette Performance. the process of decolonizing myself. At this time, I had a critical tive of confronting my own complicity, and Image courtesy of the artist. Regan’s [1] calls for settlers to take responsibility understanding of settler colonialism and was already working by extension that of larger white settler for their decolonizing work, beginning with trans- within a politicized anticolonial framework; however, these ideas culture, through examining the conditions were at times abstracted from my own family history. I came to of my maternal grandfather’s immigration formative actions that interrupt colonial forms on ask myself, how can I discuss the performance of Indigenous and his experiences prior to coming to the individual level, we put forward the urgency for memories, arts-based resistance strategies and anticolonial Canada, as well as the way the (in)visibility creative and critical settler-driven interventions. We interventions if I do not know my own history of colonialism? of that story functioned in my family nar- I returned home to unceded Coast Salish territory to talk rative. My ancestors, all Ashkenazi Jews are wary of the space that settler decolonization and listen to my grandmothers’ stories about my family, embarking from Eastern Europe and Russia, came to has and could potentially claim, and are aware of on a research project to understand how and why I was implicated Canada in the first quarter of the twentieth the potential risks of becoming another coloniz- in the colonial project. I became aware of how my family members, century. My maternal grandfather was the ing discourse and aesthetic. With this in mind, our including myself, are beneficiaries of colonialism who continue to last to arrive, reaching the port of Quebec be part of settling, and thereby occupying, Indigenous territo- City in 1925 at the age of 22. Travelling conversations are framed by the following ques- ries. The stories told by my grandmothers were indicative of the with false papers, he immigrated after tion: How can the practice of decolonizing settler invisibility of colonial violence felt by many white settlers, and the eight years of displacement following the colonialism work in productive ways that do not ways in which Canadian nationalistic narratives can indoctrinate destruction of his village in which his family individuals and families into a hegemonic colonial society. I perished. Through my art practice, I mined co-opt or de-centre Indigenous decolonization and became aware that I am a fifteenth-generation settler of North elements of his story in order to look political and cultural sovereignty? Through each America, am part of a British Empire Loyalist family, and had a at broader historical and contemporary of our personal and professional experiences we great-grandfather who negotiated land title for CN railroads and intersections of place, identity and (dis) purchased land for CN hotel estates. This process of recovering location — the idea that making place is a have witnessed the potential for creative practice settler experience revealed narratives of settler labour, hardship, human imperative and at the same time, to function in this way, to stimulate the decoloniza- community, loss and love. a potentially destructive force. In 2005, tion of the settler imagination. It is important to By mapping the immigration histories of my family in while developing here (2006), the body of conversation with my knowledge of the colonial project and Indian work that evolved from this research, and recognize that approaches to arts-based decolonial Policy in Canada, I encountered an uncomfortable and profound while preparing to relocate from Vancouver strategies vary. In the following conversation, we conclusion: my family’s economic development was buttressed by to Winnipeg, I began to ask myself ques-

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32 33 Indigenous territory in Canada are “Treaty developing awareness of their responsibil- into your installation. The class engaged in value, my interest was to probe how our People.” By acknowledging Indigenous ity and privilege, and understanding the critical responses about the ongoing invis- colonial history has shaped both the Cana- sovereignty and foregrounding Indigenous erasure of violent acts of genocide and ibility and lack of knowledge around settler dian state as well as dominant conceptions self-determination within the space of the ethnocide from national imagination and colonialism in Canadian society. Leah, your of Canadian identity and citizenship in the university classroom (a colonial institution), narratives. I remind my settler students that work initiated a space for dialogue where service of reinscribing colonial forms in the together with my Indigenous and settler in many ways, they were not supposed to all in the classroom were invited to partici- present. Extending my strategy of tamper- students we practice the simultaneous know about the deliberate histories of colo- pate, and to consider their implications in ing with iconic elements of Canadian visual projects of cross-cultural decolonization. nialism and the fact that colonialism is an and experiences with colonization. It was a culture as a means of disturbing these As a collective practice at the beginning of ongoing process. Throughout my classes, powerful and transformative moment — entrenched paradigms, this work enlists each class we acknowledge the Mi’kmaq many Indigenous students ask, why is this a moment of participating in the pedagogy the HBC’s point blanket as a material and Nation as our host, and students are invited the first time in a classroom that Indigenous of hope. official denial is an example of conceptual source. I was drawn to the to share the responsibility in stating this knowledge and perspectives are central? what I would call decolonizing aesthetics. HBC blanket for a number of reasons. The declaration of Indigenous sovereignty. And repeatedly, settler students ask, why Since viewing the piece in Winnipeg at the HBC had a prominent role as a primary My pedagogical strategies of didn’t I know this? Why didn’t I learn about Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) economic engine of the colonial project decolonizing the classroom mirror my this in high school or from the media? As national meeting in 2010, I have had many in its early stages, through the fur trade research and curatorial practices, which an educator of settler ancestry I feel it is my questions about how it came to be and was and its land holdings. HBC point blankets are informed by the politics of settler obligation to teach settlers about coloniza- hoping you might discuss its connection to have an iconic presence in contemporary responsibility and are grounded in critical tion and the histories of oppression in this your broader trade value (2009 –) series? culture and an equally powerful historical Indigenous methodology, foregrounding the country without overshadowing the learning resonance. They can be understood as a necessity of privileging multiple Indigenous environment of Indigenous students. Leah — The trade value series emerged colonial currency in the fur trade, and as an systems of knowledge and activating In dialogue with Indigenous art from the critical inquiries of here, imprint object of trade, were integrated into Indig- Indigenous methods of collaboration, practices I am able to foster conversations and the early Castor Canadensis (2008) enous life. Used as a means of spreading community engagement and mentorship that expose how all in the room, Indig- work, as well as my research in the Hud- disease in Indigenous communities, they (with an intergenerational focus). I present enous and non-Indigenous, are implicated son’s Bay Company (HBC) archives in are implicated in the violence of colonial a conceptual, or rather imagined, conversa- in the colonial project that is Canada. Winnipeg and engagement with Indi- practice. In contemporary consumer culture tion with the artists and writers, explored Learning difficult knowledge that reveals genous and non-Indigenous scholarship where their complex historical implications in each class in order to foster the central- the contemporary presence of colonial and activism. A series of distinct but con- are neutralized, the blankets are highly visi- # Leah Decter, ity of Indigenous art practice and to work trauma has had profound impacts on my nected works, trade value includes digital ble as luxury items. The multistripe version Castor Canadensis: Provokas (2013). against the marginalization of Indigenous students. A fundamental reason that I can prints, animation and textile, as well as that I use in my work serves as the HBC Performance. perspectives in Canada. What has occurred decolonize settler colonialism and invoke performative and relational works. In trade brand in the guise of housewares, fashion Image courtesy of the artist. in my students’ writing and discussions Indigenous decolonization strategies such has been profound. Many have embarked as remembering, reclaiming, rewriting and $ on familial research projects through class storytelling [5] into my classrooms is due Leah Decter, dominance, the occupation of Indigenous informed inquiry that is so lacking in most assignments that have resulted in, but are to the powerful, poignant and transforma- Castor Canadensis: Provokas (2013). land and the erasure of Indigenous cul- pedagogical contexts in the country. As not limited to, reclamation of Indigenous tive work of Indigenous contemporary Performance. Image courtesy of the artist. tures. Yet mainstream immigrant narratives a white settler educator, your strategy of identities and histories as well as realiza- artists and writers. These artists and of economic advancement through labour teaching Indigenous art centres Indigenous tion of settler narratives, relationships writers activate Indigenous perspectives and of imbrication into “Canadian” culture lived experience and knowledge in order and implications within colonialism. and visualize politicized frameworks of through the standards of liberal multicultur- to be respectful of Indigenous students, I aim to maintain transparency self-determination, agency and sover- alism, serve to efface a settler identity that while providing a way into critical reckon- and to provide contextual information for eignty. Art-based and writing-based work would account for the ways non-Indigenous ing for non-Indigenous students. Can you the students as to how and why I bring has inspired, mobilized and challenged Canadians benefit (unequally) from past elaborate on your approach to teaching strategies of decolonization into play. An my students to engage in a process of and present colonial forms. It is challenging Indigenous art as a decolonizing practice? instrumental facet of engaging students in decolonial politicization. to parse the complexities of settler histories colonial histories (at times, difficult knowl- For the past few years I have been and acknowledge our families’ implication Carla — In my position as an assistant edge) is to acknowledge each student and searching for more work that could visually in colonial processes while simultaneously professor of Art History and Critical Studies their diverse subjectivities. In an attempt articulate the politics of settler responsi- honouring individual and collective family at NSCAD University, I develop and teach to create a supportive space based on bility. I recently developed a new course stories. As such, in both pedagogical and Indigenous arts-focused curriculum as well principles of respect and collaboration I on contemporary Canadian art, where contemporary art contexts, making coun- as contemporary Canadian art courses. bring forward politics of anticolonialism the students and I explored examples of ternarratives visible and tying them directly My recent experiences working with art and anti-oppression, and together we set Indigenous and settler collaborations, and to personal narratives and present-day students around issues of Indigenous art expectations based on both individual specifically, Leah, your collaboration with accountability constitutes an important strat- practice and methodologies, art and acti- and collective responsibility. Activities that Jaimie Isaac (official denial) trade value in egy in decolonizing the passages of settlers. vism, colonial histories and social justice support self-reflexivity and personal and/ progress (2010 –). The impact of your work, have been both humbling and inspiring. or familial relationships to colonialism alongside Sonny Assu’s Chief Speaker Leah — In your classroom you cre- Our classroom spaces have become a are key to the dual processes of Indig- (2011) in the Ottawa Art Gallery installation ate conditions of exploration in which site from which to activate decolonizing enous and settler decolonization. In the of Heather Igloliorte’s exhibition Decolonize your students can grapple with difficult pedagogical models of unlearning and process of decolonizing the self as well Me, which includes the infamous G20 quote knowledge [4] and move, through creative relearning, listening and remembering. My as decolonizing settler colonialism, many by Prime Minister Harper, “We also have no practice, into a reflexive decolonizing classrooms are presented to my students potential phases or experiences are bound history of colonialism,” [6] was a catalyst process. By holding a safe yet challeng- as sites for decolonization, and as a space to occur, many of which can be traumatic. for productive and transformative dialogue. ing intellectual, emotional and creative to evoke and actualize the statement For my white settler students, feelings Many students, both Indigenous and settler, space you provide the framework through that we, as a collective of Indigenous of apathy, guilt and anger can be activated were enraged by the statement, but em- which people can enter into the kind of and non-Indigenous peoples hosted on into knowing and owning their histories, powered by the incorporation of the quote

FEATURE FUSE / 36 – 4 Decolonial Aesthetics / DECTER / TAUNTON

34 35 items and furniture and as a sanitized through informed self-reflexive works icon of nationalist identity. In trade value, such as Five Blanket Suite (2008 – 2013) their contentious genealogy is redeployed or (official apology) trade value unknown through various disruptions to the whole. (2008), and at others through collaborating As in much of my work, in order to interculturally and engaging diverse voices, interfere with the blanket, I utilize labour- as in the Human Billboard Project (2010 –) intensive everyday processes. In this work, and official denial. such practices reflect both the way colonial design is naturalized in the actions of our Carla — Recently, I’ve come to conceive everyday lives as well as the potential of my curatorial strategies as participating of our individual and collective agency in a politics of remembrance, strategically to disrupt such assumptions. Radically intended to push against the forgetting of altering and recontextualizing the blankets Canadian colonial histories within national- through material, digital and relational ist narratives. I really appreciate, Leah, what strategies brings the past and present you said about ensuring that your work into collision, solicits active participation, “speaks to and with settler communities, and speaks to the construction of colonial but not to the exclusion of Indigenous view- myths and logics while dismantling them ers or participants.” This is such a signifi- through strategies of decolonization. I cant statement and relates to our concerns identify my work with the HBC blankets about settler colonial discourse, which within a lineage of Indigenous and set- has the potential to take up space rather tler artists such as Bob Boyer, Rosalie than contribute in solidarity to Indigenous Favell and Marianne Corless, who have decolonizing processes. In my curatorial all actively subverted the trade blanket. work I also aim to engage both Indigenous and settler audience members in different Carla — Your use of the HBC blanket, but equally urgent ways. My curatorial a highly iconic symbol of Canadian identity strategies are informed by concepts of and an emblem of colonial trade relation- community engagement, conversation and ships, disrupts the celebratory tone of cross-cultural dialogue. To this end, many Canadian visual culture and is a clever and of my curatorial and academic projects sophisticated way of turning the colonial are collaborative initiatives. In 2010, for gaze back onto the histories and visual example, Daina Warren and I co-curated a representations of colonialism. Can you performance art series in Kingston, talk further about some of your objectives Ontario. For this series, Acting Out, Claim- and/or strategies in working with a criti- ing Space: Aboriginal Performance Art cal settler lens within your art practice? Series, we invited Skeena Reece, Terrance Houle, Tanya Lukin Linklater and Jordan Leah — As a white settler artist, I take Bennett to respond to the histories and a different approach than one would in spaces of the city. Ultimately the series, a classroom context that focuses on which ran in conjunction with Queen’s centering Indigenous art production and University’s Aboriginal Awareness Week, Indigenous knowledge. I make work from a mobilized Indigenous perspectives and critical settler perspective that focuses on voices. As curators, we asked both the examining colonial mythologies, histories artists and audience members to consider and presents, and articulating settler the following: How does an Indigenous accountability with respect to the current voice contend with these overarching state of relations between Indigenous and histories and extreme social conditions non-Indigenous peoples, governments that have formed this urban space, and and communities in Canada. Inverting the what constitutes Indigenous space(s)? colonial gaze is a strategy I have used The series created a space for gathering, throughout this work. My intention, in and the performances mediated dialogue part, is to manifest decolonizing coun- about Indigenous histories, representation ternarratives from a settler perspective, and settler colonialism. As a decolonizing in conscious alliance with Indigenous strategy, the act of gathering is significant decolonization. My aim is to speak to and in igniting the sharing of ideas and of with settler communities, but not to the potentially new and difficult knowledges exclusion of Indigenous viewers or partici- across settler and Indigenous divides. pants. For settlers engaging in decolonizing Aspects of official denial that I find work, it is equally crucial to take on the particularly exciting, in terms of activating # Leah Decter, responsibility of speaking with other decolonial aesthetics and strategies, are Castor Canadensis: Provokas (2013). settlers as it is to work in collaboration with the collaboration with Jaimie Isaac and Performance. Indigenous people. My work enlists both the workshop component in which you Image courtesy of the artist. of these strategies, at times manifested invited audience members to participate

FEATURE FUSE / 36 – 4 Decolonial Aesthetics / DECTER / TAUNTON

36 37 and respond to the official statement made the conception of productive discomfort in same time, it represents a vital practice that fur trade; however, the resilience of its in this work was to transverse visible and of settler entitlement that have been built by Canada’s prime minister (about the creative, curatorial and pedagogical models can contribute to the potential of enacting position as a Canadian icon is also tied to invisible evidence, marking and enacting around settler individuals and collectives, denial of colonial violence and histories is: Whose discomfort is it, and for whom is settler resistance to entrenched narratives, the anthropomorphic characterization of its the labour attached to colonial place mak- and by listening to Indigenous voices and in this country). Can you discuss your the discomfort productive? In relation to symbols and ambivalences. instinctive habits as decidedly industrious. ing and practices of decolonization. As has knowledge, we can actively engage in interest in Harper’s statement and expand processes of unsettling settler identities, Your strategic creative interventions, Although not wholly inaccurate, this invoca- been suggested by Patrick Wolfe, settler politicized conversations of settler colonial- on your conception of collaborative arts discomfort is a valuable and necessary which employ nationalist iconic imagery tion of diligence and hard work nonetheless colonization is structural. [8] All the labour ism, responsibility and decolonization. Just practice with respect to official denial? component. A productive relationship with such as the HBC blanket, or the beaver in serves to affirm the colonial project’s model of colonizing will only be undone through as Canadian visual culture and aesthet- discomfort produced through creative your recent installation Castor Canadensis: of emplacement through the enactment of attention, intention, commitment and effort. ics have clearly played a powerful role in Leah — official denial began with the practice can apprehend the ways in which Provokas (2013), arguably create space to labour. With the limits of this comparison perpetuating colonial paradigms, they have intention of using Harper’s 2009 statement settler comfort has perpetuated colonial dismantle the myths and nostalgia connect- in mind, it could also be argued that the Leah and Carla—Our work is informed significant potential to contribute to these “We also have no history of colonialism” agendas of settler privilege, occupation and ed to Canadian identity, as well as for the beaver’s instinctual habits echo intentional by Indigenous and non-Indigenous schol- conversations as a vital catalyst in encoun- as a mirror of mainstream Canadian denial Indigenous oppression. Of course, contem- (re)writing of a more multilayered history of human practices of place making, which ars such as Linda Tuhiwai Smith and tering and unsettling settler colonialism. that might engage settler Canadians in porary Indigenous artists have been taking Canada. Can you discuss your decision to can be both affirming and deleterious. In Paulette Regan, whose work has clarified confronting and reflecting on personal and these kinds of creative risks for over four incorporate the iconic image of the beaver subverting the beaver as Canadian icon, I the necessity of the simultaneous projects Leah Decter is a Winnipeg-based political accountability. A more complex am interested in the ways that all of these of Indigenous and settler decolonization. intermedia artist working in video, digital dialogue was launched when Jaimie Isaac underlying connotations can be interrupted We understand the strategies we use in media, installation, textiles, performance curated the project for the inaugural Truth and mobilized to examine and disturb curating, writing, teaching and cultural and social practice. She has exhibited and and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Win- aspects of colonial nation building. production to be part of an ongoing process presented her work widely in Canada and nipeg National Event in June 2010. Through As a co-production with the beaver through which we are committed to advanc- internationally in the US, UK, Australia and Germany. Her videos have screened its inclusion in the TRC exhibition and Jai- and as an intervention into the land/ ing a decolonizing imperative. This calls us at the Images Festival and the Interna- mie’s ongoing involvement as co-activator scape, Provokas considers the layering of to actively listen, learn, question, enact and tional Film Festival Rotterdam, and at of the project, it has become an intercultural complicity and brings into play notions of evolve. We recognize that our statement of Malta Contemporary Art. Her work dialogue and a cross-cultural collaboration territory, home, occupation and labour. A commitment towards settler decoloniza- investigates histories and contemporary that apprehends denial through depic- week-long performance, it consists of the tion (on individual, collective, national and conditions of settler colonialism in Canada through a critical white settler lens. Decter tion of colonial truths and considerable physical relocation of the residual mate- institutional levels) is a privileged declara- holds an MFA in New Media from the decolonizing vision. In parallel with the rial from the beaver’s alterations of the tion insofar as we, along with other settler Berlin-based Transart Institute, and is transformative learning space of your land/scape — the tree stumps that are left academics, artists, curators and activists, currently undertaking a PhD in Cultural classroom, where all are in conversation behind when beavers make their lodges have chosen to engage in these conversa- Studies at Queen’s University in Kingston. together, official denial mobilizes a dialogue and wear down their teeth. Through the tions, whereas for many individuals of Carla Taunton is an assistant professor and transformative decolonizing space process of locating, cutting, removing and Indigenous ancestry it is part of a politics of Indigenous arts and visual culture at in which Indigenous and non-Indigenous relocating approximately 300 stumps with of survivance. [9] Further, while knowing NSCAD University. Completing her PhD in voices are represented in layers of critical the labour of my body, this piece offers that it is crucial for settler individuals and Indigenous visual culture at Queen's Uni- exchange. It is this dialogue, with all its a meditation on the con/de-struction of collectives to make their decolonizing versity in the department of art in 2011, her dissertation explored Indigenous dissonance, ruptures and alliances, that is home in the colonial context, speaking work visible, we recognize the danger performance art as acts of resistance centered; and the participants are able to to individual culpability and the ways of a settler focus occupying space in a and self-determination that participate in engage from and express their positionali- labour legitimizes settler entitlement. manner that reinscribes colonial logics. the project of decolonization. Her current ties, stories and convictions. This project The stumps are reconfigured in the We contend that the practice of research investigates the projects of In- has presented an unequalled learning field, replicating the footprint of a skeletal decolonizing the self as well as settler digenous sovereignty and settler respon- sibility. Dr. Taunton is an alliance member experience for me as a settler artist. The timber-frame construction [7] reminiscent colonialism necessitates a commitment of the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective and collaboration with Jaimie, the interaction of a pioneer-style house or barn, itself a to a personally grounded process that is an independent curator. with hosts and participants, and the reflec- # ghost of colonial occupation. The twelve-by- always in development and flux. It is not a tion entailed in my ongoing analysis of Leah Decter, eighteen-foot rectangle is also reminiscent prescriptive or formulaic practice, but can the project continue to inform how I move Castor Canadensis: Provokas (2013). of the perimeter traced with my footsteps be productively informed by the politics of forward in my art, research and teaching. Performance. in the imprint performance and videos, listening, questioning and remembrance. Image courtesy of the artist. and as such recalls a recurrent theme in By remembering the policies and myths Carla and Leah — In the classroom, one my practice which contends with settler that legitimated colonial expansion and can be direct and clear about what is con- decades, exemplified in the reclaiming of in your work? attachment to Indigenous land and the settlement in Canada, by probing our veyed and what is being asked of students, stereotypical representation, embodying of Leah — Provokas is the third in the entitlement of settler desire. My interest personal histories and the reified stories without being didactic. Working through a colonial trauma, revealing of personal lived Castor Canadensis series and is part of an creative platform, and an aesthetic of cul- experience, remembering erased histories, ongoing practice of enacting interventions [1] See Paulette Regan, “A Problem,’” in Dilemmas of York Press, 1998). For further [5] See Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Colonialism and the Transformation tural production that leaves more space for and celebrating survival, resilience and cul- into romanticized tropes of Canadian land/ Transformative Framework for Reconciliation: Cases and Concepts, investigations of dif!cult Decolonizing Methodologies: of Anthropology: The Politics and the viewer to enter, necessitates a balance tural continuance through artistic practice. scape. Taking its title from the Latin term for Decolonizing Canada: A eds. Carol A.L. Prager and Trudy knowledge, see Roger I. Simon, Research and Indigenous Peoples Poetics of an Ethnographic Event between creating openings for interpreta- “Canadian beaver,” the Castor Canadensis Non-Indigenous Approach” Govier (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier Sharon Rosenberg and Claudia (London: Zed Books Limited, (London: Cassell, 1999). (paper presented at IGOV University Press, 2003), 223–244. Eppert, eds., Between Hope and 1999). tion through individual subject position and Carla — In the Canadian context, several series enlists the iconic rodent as an avatar Doctoral Student Symposium, Despair: Pedagogy and the [9] Gerald Vizenor argues that lived experience, and conveying enough settler artists such as yourself, Leah, have of Canadian history, trade, commerce and University of Victoria, 20 January [3] See Lorenzo Veracini, “Settler Remembrance of Historical Trauma [6] David Ljunggren, “Every G20 Native stories are stories of Native lucidity for the work not to be (mis)inter- engaged in imagining aesthetic strate- constructed settler identity. The beaver 2005), available online; and Colonialism and Decolonisation,” (Oxford: Rowman and Little!eld Nation Wants to Be Canada, survivance, which he de!nes as preted as reinscribing colonial forms that gies that create space for cross-cultural is intrinsically linked to the inception of Regan, Unsettling the Settler borderlands e-journal 6, no. 2 Publishers, 2000); Erica Lehrer, Insists PM,” Reuters (25 being “more than survival, more Within: Indian Residential Schools, (2007; online). Cynthia E. Milton and Monica September 2009; online). than endurance or mere response; one is trying to disrupt. A critical practice of discussions about the entangled histories Canada through the fur trade, has featured Truth Telling, and Reconciliation in Eileen Patterson, eds., Curating the stories of survivance are an learning and listening is crucial in develop- of colonialism, immigration and nation prominently as a symbol of Canada, and is Canada (Vancouver: University of [4] Deborah Britzman !rst Difficult Knowledge: Violent Pasts in [7] Titled Part Lot 18, Concession active presence.” Gerald Vizenor, ing this balance, as is the recognition of a building. In this kind of work, there is an ubiquitous as a nationalist representation of British Columbia Press, 2010). de!ned the term “dif!cult Public Places (New York: Palgrave 6 (2012), this structure is a Manifest Manners: Post-Indian knowledge” in Lost Subjects, Macmillan, 2011); and “Reconcile semipermanent installation on Warriors of Survivance (Middle- level of productive discomfort in articulating inherent risk of reinscribing colonial power Canada in consumer culture. [2] See Roger Epp, “We Are All Contested Objects: Toward a This!,” West Coast Line 74, vol. 46, Susie Osler’s !eldwork. ton: Wesleyan University Press, these kinds of difficult knowledges. An relationships, and for misunderstandings of The beaver’s symbolic status was Treaty People: History, Psychoanalytic Inquiry of Learning no. 2 (Summer 2012; online). 1994), 15. imperative question that needs to guide strategic subversions and critique. At the initially engendered through its role in the Reconciliation, and the ‘Settler (Albany: State University of New [8] See Patrick Wolfe, Settler

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38 39 while also suggesting provisional defini- who understands that these issues really otherwise be convinced to do. But Spivak A column of frank reviews of recent exhibitions of Indigenous art. tions. Hill mentions diverse but shared matter, and I was not at all surprised to makes clear that the group deploying experiences of colonialism as a key element, find myself constantly circling back to this strategic essentialism should be aware of CLOSE while catalogue essayist Jolene Rickard claim and trying to decide whether I agreed. their ironic relationship to the notion of es- points us to Ronald Niezen’s reference to I concluded that I’m not convinced of the sence. It should be “ideally, self-conscious “peoples who have ‘existed (presumably need for strategic essentialism, but I think for all mobilized…The critique of the ‘fetish in a particular territory) since time imme- that my disagreement here is more a matter character’ (so to speak) of the masterword READINGS morial.’” [2] This makes me wonder about of language and emphasis than substance. has to be persistent all along the way… who isn’t in the exhibition. The Irish, for Let me walk you through my thinking and Otherwise the strategy freezes into… an example, could meet both criteria without you can judge for yourself. essentialist position.” [6] If the essentialism a stretch. Why exclude them? Are they too Rickard draws explicitly on the isn’t to motivate us, it must be to motivate Richard William Hill European? Not “tribal” enough? Any answer work of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, who others, as a way of playing into expectations we give leads to more questions. What introduced the idea of strategic essential- to get what we want. That’s a dangerous ! about Africa? Should the term Indigenous ism in her book In Other Worlds. Rickard strategy for us. We have long been the Brian Jungen, Court (2004). be confined to peoples of settler colonies quotes a key passage, defining it as “the victims of Romantic essentialism — to the Sewing tables, painted steel, paint, basketball hoops that didn’t decolonize? One of my favourite ways in which subordinate or marginalized point that we often internalize it without the and backboards, 2500 × 300 × 250 cm. proposals is Jimmie Durham’s suggestion social groups may temporarily put aside benefit of strategic irony — and I would only National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa Gift of the Rennie Collection, Vancouver, 2012 that the category Indigenous could include local differences in order to forge a sense of hazard to rely on it in the most temporary © Brian Jungen Studio all the peoples of the world who have had collective identity through which they band and urgent circumstances. Spivak also Image courtesy of © NGC nation statehood imposed on them overtop together in political movements.” [5] What urges us to remember that strategic es- of their existing forms of social and politi- has always confused me about this concept sentialism is a strategy and that “a strategy cal organization. [3] This could then give is where essentialism enters into it; that is, suits a situation; a strategy is not a theory.” us common cause with the Rommany, for who is it for and how does it help? After all, [7] It seems to me that our situation in the example, and many others. it is commonplace for people to put aside art world does not require an essentialist However we probe the term differences to align themselves politically. strategy, but even if it did, we would still Indigenous it becomes clear that it is a Many people join political parties and identify also need a theory to address the actual big sticky mess — a heurism rather than an themselves as leftists, liberals or conser- complexities of our position. Sakahàn: International I was going to say that Sakahàn Pacific Islands, Northern Europe, Japan and essence. This is why I have always gagged vatives knowing that they share a roughly Returning to Rickard’s essay, it is the most important exhibition of Indig- Taiwan. I am intimately familiar with much over the derivative term, indigeneity. The common purpose but no definitive essence. seems to call for the use of strategic es- Indigenous Art enous art since Land, Spirit, Power and of the work coming out of Canada and the suffix “ity” is added to words to suggest be- Essentialism can only be “stra- sentialism in advocating for several things National Gallery of Canada Indigena in 1992. But then I stopped myself. US, but my ignorance of the specificities of ing in a state or having a quality of the word tegic” if an imaginary essence motivates that are quite different. For instance, toward Not because I doubt the importance of culture and historical circumstance of many that it is applied to. To me this suggests people to do something they couldn’t clear legal definitions in international law 17 May–2 September 2013 Sakahàn: it is hugely important. I’m just of the other artists in the show is profound. some sort of “Indigenousness,” but what as well as distinct Indigenous spaces in the not sure that I would even be comparing I take some comfort knowing that one of could that possibly be? Imagine if we tried international art world. I don’t know enough the same category of things. We may be in the purposes of this show is for us to get to move back and forth in the same way about international law to say whether there entirely new territory here. For those who to know each other. For the sake of brevity between the term feminism and femininity, is a case for strategic essentialism in that don’t recall, the 1992 exhibits were the most in the face of a huge exhibition I will depart as though they were synonyms? Or if we context, but I think that the art world would prominent first attempts by major Canadian from this column’s usual focus on artworks described Canadian studies as the study be more receptive to a non-essentialist po- institutions to acknowledge and survey in order to address the important meta- of “Canadianity” or Canadianess? In both sition. [8] We can be explicit about our lack what we would now call contemporary issues posed by the exhibition. That said, I cases it would be immediately recognized of essence and still find many valid reasons !% Indigenous art. At that time, the term Indig- want to acknowledge at the outset that the as a limiting essentialism. If it is too late to to talk to each other, build networks and (facing page) enous was not in wide use and the curators work in the show is, with only a few excep- come up with a better term then I think we advance shared political positions. Jimmie Durham, Encore tranquillité (2008). Fibreglass stone and airplane, 150 × 860 × 806 cm. explored the field within the geographic tions, very strong and represents a stunning ought to at least be clear that by indigeneity We can also take Spivak’s distinc- National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. boundaries of two settler colonies: Canada range of intellectual inquiry. we mean something like “anything having to tion between strategy and theory further. Image courtesy of Roman März. and the United States. Since then the rise At the heart of Sakahàn is a do with one or more Indigenous peoples”; One of the things that often happens in of the term Indigenous has coincided with a question the curators have wisely chosen an aggregate rather than an essence. writing on Indigenous culture is a slippage history of international relationship building not to definitively answer: What does “In- Rickard proposes that we deploy between discussions and language associ- and political action that has led to an expan- digenous” mean in an international context, the term Indigenous as a strategic essen- ated with capital-P politics, and language sion in the scope of our field to the global and therefore, who is and is not Indig- tialism, and Hill refers to and echoes this used to articulate small-p political and scale. The curators of Sakahàn showed up enous? Under that question is another: position in his essay. [4] Rickard is a scholar cultural theory. This gives us phrases like ready to take on the world (and institution- What social and political work are we trying of particular intelligence and commitment “cultural autonomy” and “cultural sovereignty.” ally, positioned to take over most of the to make this concept do? Are we attempt- National Gallery as well). ing to define an essence, or construct a I headed to Ottawa for the exhibi- series of political affiliations? Despite the [1] The advisors were Jolene category ‘indigenous,’ acting to Metropolis M, no. 6 (2003): 86–93. Art,” 58. Quote originally from [8] Rickard’s argument is directed, Rickard, Yuh-Yao Wan, Irene conceal the fact that the term and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, In in part, at Bill Anthes’s suggestion tion’s opening confident of my expertise, curators treading lightly around a definition, Snarby, Arpana Caur, Lee-Ann the international movement [4] See Jolene Rickard, “The Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural that Indigenous artists adopt a and left it humbled and exhilarated, a novice their comments in the catalogue essays Martin, Brenda Croft, Megan associated with it are of very Emergence of Global Indigenous Politics (New York: Methuen, cosmopolitan rather than a once again with many new issues to work and their selection of artists do provide Tamati-Quennell and Reiko Saito. recent origin.” Ronald Niezen, Art,” in Sakahàn: International 1987), 209. nationalist approach at The Origins of Indigenism: Human Indigenous Art, eds. Greg A. Hill, international biennials. See Bill through and much to learn. I will therefore provisional suggestions. The exhibition had [2] It is important to note that in Rights and the Politics of Identity Jolene Rickard and Christine [6] Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Anthes, “Contemporary Native begin with a few caveats. This is an enor- three curators: Greg Hill, Candice Hopkins the source that Rickard cites, (Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: Lalonde (Ottawa: National Outside in the Teaching Machine Artists and International Biennial mous exhibition featuring over eighty artists and Christine Lalonde. There were also a Niezen refers to this de!nition as University of California Press, Gallery of Canada, 2013), 58; and (New York & London: Routledge, Culture,” Visual Anthropology a means to point out the problem 2003), 201. Greg Hill, “Afterword: Looking 1993), 4–5. Review 25, no. 2 (Fall 2009): from sixteen countries. Along with Canada number of advisors and catalogue essay- of expanding it to the global scale: Back to Sakahàn,” Sakahàn, 138. 109–127. and the US, there are artists from India, ists. [1] Many emphasized the fluid and “The same sense of permanence [3] Jimmie Durham, “Binnen- [7] Ibid., 4. Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, the multiple character of the term Indigenous easily transposes onto the global landse zaken” [Internal Affairs], [5] Rickard, “Global Indigenous

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40 41 These terms worry me because they seem to more subtle approach because this is an exhibition is scheduled to roll around. As a lose track of the distinction between insti- exercise in getting to know one another and curator, I have always been grateful for ad- tutional arrangements, which are inevitably they wanted to leave things open. Aside vice, and have taken much of it to heart; but A column on the political economies of discursive events in the blunt instruments, and the more subtle from the room exploring the Indian Act, the in the end I have followed my own inspira- contemporary art world. and promiscuous movements of culture. other spaces tend to mix artists of diverse tion and judgment. So I will suggest some MAKING Rickard is right to be concerned with work- backgrounds together, and it was fascinat- things as an intellectual exercise, while ing out international legal definitions of ing to try and sort through and make sense remaining happy in the knowledge that terms like Indigenous in order to protect of both the connections and differences. the curators of the future will likely have Indigenous rights in international law, for Although the curators’ decision to hold other ideas that better suit their muses. IT WORK example. But let’s not confuse those sorts back is legitimate — and certainly preferable It strikes me that one way to manage the of legal definitions with the kind of work we to a heavy-handed didactic approach — I still scale and create more focused dialogues want to do as artists and cultural theorists, would have liked to see a bit more reflection across cultures, now that we know each which should be a more subtle form of in the exhibition itself on what they believe other a little better, might be to break up Did You Do the Reading? inquiry open to ambiguity and internal they have learned in the process of putting the exhibition into distinct (perhaps even differences. If by “cultural sovereignty” we the show together. That said, the work in individually curated) sub-exhibitions. For Maiko Tanaka mean that we want Indigenous-controlled the show tends to be strong and engag- example, it may be slightly outside the spaces at international biennales, that’s ing in its own right and can hold up without contemporary remit, but after the event’s one thing. This would in fact be an admin- explicit explanation. It is also worth noting symposium I found myself very curious istrative autonomy, an explicitly political that two of the most impressive works in about how Indigenous artists from around construct. But it is all too easy to interpret the exhibition, Brian Jungen’s Court (2004) the world grappled with international mod- Reading groups are common in do not need to ‘perform’ this reading group,” “cultural sovereignty” as the idea that our and Jimmie Durham’s Encore tranquillité ernism. I’d love to see a section of a future Read-in at Shifts in Time: the contemporary art world. Their legacy [1] hinting at the potential for more informal cultures stand alone in pristine isolation or (2008), are almost alone in the exhibition exhibition explore that question. Another Performing the Chronic stems from self-organized, non-hierarchical conditions of knowledge production. that somehow we are the only ones who in not directly addressing questions of possibility would be to think of “Indig- formats such as 1960s Marxist study groups In fact, these days reading should be able to speak about them. The identity politics or Indigenous representa- enous” as a theme rather than the identity and second wave feminist consciousness- groups of the art world seem to move rath- first is empirically false, the second a recipe tion. The fact that both works and many of the participants, and open it up further Produced by PhD in Practice, raising groups. Some of today’s reading er fluidly between institutional and private for self-inflicted marginalization. others in the exhibition are now part of the to potential non-Indigenous allies whom groups (such as the recently initiated Social self-organized spaces, which raises some But I should move on to the National Gallery’s permanent collection is we would like to bring into the conversa- Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna Practice Study Group in Toronto) resemble concerns. While there is mobility and au- show itself. The curators used a light hand yet another sign of the effect Hill and his tion. We’d still be in charge and would these older formats in their intention to tonomy when self-organized groups direct in arranging the exhibition and guiding our colleagues have had on the institution. dominate things, but we’d be expanding create informal spaces for close readings their learning collectively and draw from experience of it. There is an introductory The most visible distinction be- the dialogue at the same time. To my mind Location: MUMOK Kino, with rotating facilitators. Other groups, like their own practices and experiences, read- didactic panel at the entrance that tenta- tween artists across the exhibition is not this would be an extension of the inter- Museum of Modern Art, No Reading After the Internet (Vancouver/ ing groups cannot be considered critically tively describes themes the curators have the result of their traditional culture but est Hopkins expresses in her catalogue Toronto), experiment with reading as a without looking into how they may privi- noticed, including tendencies amongst the rather their colonial circumstances; that essay regarding “the ‘contact zones’ — the Vienna medium in itself, not requiring participants lege individualized, competitive modes of artists to “question colonial narratives, pres- is, between those artists who have been in-between and tentative connections cre- to prepare readings in advance and reading knowledge acquisition. How might reading ent parallel histories, value the handmade, art school trained and function (roughly ated to bridge the gap between peoples out loud together instead. Some reading group practices be implicated in the opera- explore relationships between the spiritual, speaking) within the conventions of the and cultures — areas rich with story and 8 May 2013 groups have been initiated by art institutions tions of a neoliberal knowledge economy? the uncanny and the everyday” and to pres- mainstream international contemporary potential knowledge.” [10 ] We might not themselves, such as the Amsterdam-based Is the critical edge of reading groups dulled ent “highly personal responses to social art world, and those who are working in feel entirely comfortable there yet, but it is curatorial platform, If I Can’t Dance (IICD), when they are brought into institutions of and cultural trauma.” The rest of the didactic parallel art worlds, with markets aimed the territory most of us have inhabited for whose monthly reading group has sprouted art which are being rebranded as a sector material focuses on individual artists, and at outside consumers. Lalonde notes this some time. satellite locations for its thematic sessions, of the knowledge economy? we are left to our own devices in figuring disparity in her essay and argues, “The which include Toronto. Just because reading groups out why works are grouped together in challenge became not so much a mat- On a practical level, reading may present an alternative to top-down particular galleries. In some cases this is ter of masking an inequality of means in Richard William Hill is an independent groups, with their attention to accessibility structures doesn’t mean they are egalitarian not too difficult. Perhaps the most obvious the exhibition but of understanding how writer and curator and Associate Pro- and openness, are relatively light organi- by nature. As with any collective structure, fessor of Art History at York University. is a room of works by Sonny Assu, Law- the artists could be on equal footing and zational structures that fit well alongside it takes work and time to pay attention to He gratefully acknowledges the sup- rence Paul Yuxweluptun and Nadia Myre, what happens when they are seen side port of the Canada Council for the Arts exhibitions and performance events, and and negotiate tensions that pull between which all respond to Canada’s Indian Act. by side.” [9] This is a productive first step, for assistance with travel expenses with educational mandates within art insti- openness and exclusivity, institutional Other galleries seem to take up themes of but there is still a lot of unpacking to be related to this review. tutions and alternative spaces. For instance, and grassroots approaches, authority and violence and trauma or the relationship to done. Among other things, it means that they are often open for anyone to join, there amateurism, and all the spaces in between. handcraft, while many others remained a those of us with nice, middle-class first- is usually either no fee or a pay-what-you- Such tensions can be productive if space mystery to me. This may be because some world careers — institutional curators and can approach to cost, and they tend to take and time are given to grapple with and test of the juxtapositions were more visually academics, say — need to begin thinking place under informal conditions, such as in out alternative formations, but without poetic than explicitly thematic and I was about how we navigate our own privilege people’s homes or during the after-hours concerted effort we can blindly reproduce searching in vain, or perhaps it is just that I as these relationships develop. of artist-run spaces and offices. For arts disempowering standards for some that have trouble processing a lot of information Lastly I would like to speculate organizations, reading groups can also be rarely get called into question. at once and never made all the connections. about what we might look forward to in appealing as parallel spaces for thinking The questions above are actually I suspect the curators took this five years when the next iteration of this and reflection out of the limelight. The first ones I discuss and struggle through with a item listed in a description of the IICD read- group called Read-in. Indeed, most of the ing group reads, “There is no audience. We questions I have posed have been devel- [9] Christine Lalonde, “Introduc- [10] Candice Hopkins, “On tion: At the Crossroads of Other Pictures: Imperialism, Indigeneity, Globalization and Historical Amnesia and [1] “Reading Group: Contemporary Art,” Sakahàn, 18. Mimesis,” Sakahàn, 27. Amsterdam,” If I Can’t Dance (2013; online).

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42 43 oped with other members and through my different approach. The text was also in native listeners. It was a moment when col- ments in which we repeated certain parts of strated in our door-to-door activities, this specific to any other Read-in collective ongoing activity with this collective over the affinity with a legacy that Read-in gains lective listening was highlighted as a crucial the text out loud that were inspiring for her, was perhaps the most generalized public member being asked in a certain time or past three years. [2] We struggle with the insight from on an ongoing basis, the aspect of collective reading. and that she wanted to think more about environment we had encountered. The place. My perspective is inflected by my own question of how to keep theory, location, history of second wave feminist reading Another unintended effect was the questions raised by the “experimental usually small size of the spaces we read in commitments to public programming in cu- bodies and action together, as an explicit and consciousness-raising groups, whose the power of novelty in the experience moment when reading turns into memoriz- limits the possibility of greater attendance. ratorial practice. Nevertheless, the question part of our practice. Read-in functions simul- members created conditions to discuss of reading a text out loud with a large ing” — what is the potential of this moment, Our regulars, and most other people who was perhaps most significant in confronting taneously across the variety of institutional topics that women could speak to from group of people. Reading out loud is a why try to invest in memorizing, how and join our sessions, find out about them the public responsibilities and ethics of relations I described above: as an indepen- their own life experiences with politi- consistent strategy for Read-in, as a way with whom? through our mailing list, or through com- our reading practice, and it will take time dently artist-led vehicle, as constituted in cal analysis. However, Sojourner Truth’s to stay with the physicality of reading, and Our experimental reading session mon networks and personal or institutional for us to work through this. collaboration with an art institution which speech seemed to embody the presence to have participants engage with the texts also generated other disruptive moments invitations, depending on our hosts. As To unpack the reading group, first commissioned it for a long-term curato- of a personal and political testimony in in the present rather than prepare them that connect to how and for whom we much as such a “self-selecting” audience exposing its affinities with intellectual rial project [3] and as an artistic work curated a way that seemed to demand the pres- individually in advance. This how to read, were reading, as well as where and why. can create an enriching and productive economies, colonial histories and disciplinary by other institutions for various program- ence and locatedness of the reader. The for the Read-in collective, has been our way Participants later questioned why Read-in reading group environment by constitut- pedagogies, is not an easy or straightfor- ming events and exhibitions. Each iteration speech “Ain’t I a Woman?” was never written of trying to counter the urge to “go solo,” would choose to read in such a spectacu- ing a group whose members share critical ward endeavour. As might be expected for tends to open up different and challenging down by the celebrated orator. The printed virtuoso contributions of something smart or lar format. This was in fact the first time questions, political trajectories and/or any experimental practice, accessing new new questions. handouts that we passed around to the performing one’s expertise in the presence Read-in facilitated something so public and living and working lifestyles, these condi- sites to inhabit across dichotomies will This past March, three members audience were three of several transcrip- of one’s peers. Curiously, however, our with such a large number of people reading tions can also produce more homogenous always open up a new can of worms. But of Read-in (Annette Krauss, Serena Lee tions that exist of the speech, written from collective reading out loud at the MUMOK simultaneously. We often operate as many profiles than open and diverse interac- this can be great fun to work through to- and I) orchestrated a reading group of over memory by white abolitionist journalists in some ways created a new distance from typical reading groups do, gathering in tions and at worst, they reproduce elitist gether. We also need many more options, 75 people at the Museum of Modern Art who witnessed the event. Of the versions the content of the text. People enjoyed small groups in far more modest conditions segregations. The for whom for Read-in problematizations of our reading material (MUMOK), Vienna. We guided the public we used, two took the racialized and the experience of reading together, which and in less staged and timed situations. But is thus confronted directly in this more and approaches to reading that produce audience in simultaneously reading out loud politicized words and phrases spoken seemed to induce nostalgia for the last time this decision on format had to do with the general public moment at the MUMOK, and different intellectual, affective, social and and collectively memorizing three different by Truth (who was born in New York and they read out loud with others (as a child, at place and the purpose we were there for in even more so since the event took place economic constellations and that open transcriptions of the speech “Ain’t I a Wom- sold to a Dutchman) and falsely attributed church, at school, &c) so that we lost the fo- the first place. Our twenty-minute session on the museum’s free admission night. new pathways of practice for group reading an?” by Sojourner Truth, abolitionist and an imaginary accent of a universalized cus on the actual words of Sojourner Truth. was part of a series of evening performan- We decided to address the short that recognize the political nature of knowl- self-emancipated African American former Southern slave in its transcription. [4] The One participant who joined our breakout ses- ces, readings and screenings by twelve time frame and accommodate a more edge and all knowledge-making practices. slave. Questions around embodied and col- third transcript we gave out was written in sion afterwards took this further, reducing artists as a collaboratively programmed intimate discussion through the facilitation What comes up when the intersections lective reading were entangled with gender, “standard” late twentieth-century Ameri- the role of content to nil in such an affective public moment for the PhD In Practice of our breakout session. We planned this in are entangled and made more intense and race, memory and language in this twenty- can English, [5] removing the trace of any performance, proposing that it wouldn’t course at Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts, order to attend to any disturbances or ques- embodied? There are many experiments minute reading session, and were facilitated accent at all. [6] Right off the bat, the text have mattered if we had collectively read of which founding Read-in member Krauss tions that emerged in the main session and out there already, such as the groups in later in a smaller group discussion with in- already offered a complicated matrix of rela- a speech by Hitler, since the affect of the is a participant. The event, “Shifts in Time: to allow us to unpack the highly contentious Toronto mentioned earlier. Another might terested participants. The event was unique tions for us and our fellow readers. The experience would still dominate the content. Performing the Chronic,” consisted of thirty- reading of “Ain’t I a Woman?” together. For be the Occupy Amsterdam Artists Reading as this was the first time Read-in had mani- what to read in this case included contest- As shocked and skeptical as I was at this minute sessions for each artist’s perfor- instance, one of the colleagues from the Group, who gathered in common interest fested our experimental reading sessions for ed authenticities, multiple versions inflected participant’s proposition, it affirmed that the mance. PhD program expressed her disturbance at to unpack the politics of location and occu- a formal performance event, as opposed to with different accents, racist appropria- choice of subject matter for a text doesn’t Normally the conditions for read- seeing a mostly white, European audience pation in relation to the historical positions the more informal and “backstage” spaces tions and projections and the utterly unde- necessarily affect pedagogical structures. If ing are very important for Read-in, as we recite the imposed Southern slave accent of of artists within movements, by contend- we normally worked within, opening up an niable physical body which Truth constantly a dominant mode of reading is approached are used to testing out different sites for the speech. However, the breakout proved to ing with relevant texts on art, economy opportunity for insight into a movement from makes present in her spoken words. with the premise of neutrality, the critical our sessions in order to call attention to the occupy a very marginal place in the event, as and politics. Such practices suggest ways “supplement” to “content.” In order to keep There were several problematic intervention of racialized and politicized role of place in reading. Previous practices it took place during a break in the program to work through the reading group as a with a critique of the “un-innocence” of neo- power relations we left critically untouched words such as those of Sojourner Truth may include going door-to-door to ask strangers and spilled over into other performances, medium for unlearning reading as an inno- liberal life-long learning ideologies and the in terms of what we read. For instance, to fall flat. In fact, this problem brings to the to spontaneously host our reading sessions which limited its access. Other questions cent activity, whether through political and elitism that reading groups can reproduce present such texts in Vienna, an environ- fore the impossibility of separating content in their own homes, as well as reading while were raised with respect to the Viennese re-embodied confrontations with texts, or even in non-institutional contexts, I’ll attempt ment in which English is not the primary and context. walking. However, although our reading audience’s assumed lack of knowledge towards undermining competitive relations to critically assess a few moments that spoken language, reproduced the domi- There were other, and potentially sessions normally last three to four hours, of North American histories of race and and performances of expertise. How can stood out from the event, structured around nance of English as the standard language more productive, experiences of this nov- we agreed to the strict performance time gender politics. we critically investigate alternative prac- the following question: What, how and for for the Western-centric contemporary art elty of reading out loud together. One male frame we were given in Vienna. We negoti- Our group reflected later that it tices to draw out different potentials, and whom do we read? world. This blind spot emerged in a conflict colleague found it quite transformative to ated the addition of a breakout session for would have been productive to seek out in what ways might such an investigation We chose the speech by So- between the members of Read-in during recite out loud the phrase “Ain’t I a Woman?” anyone interested in joining, although it a second session in the main program for play out in the form of a reading group? journer Truth for its potential as a counter- our rehearsals as well as after the event over and over with other people, creating ran parallel to the programmed works that another large group event, to touch base memory to colonial histories, for those in when one member expressed frustration a gendered affinity that could not have followed. Nevertheless, the experience on what we had already read. I’m sure there Maiko Tanaka collaborates on curatorial the audience who may not know of her with the speed and aptitude of English happened if he had read the text in silence brought into relief an example of different could have been many other approaches projects at the intersection of art, inspiring story and for those who might speaking members such as Serena and I and on his own. Read-in member Annette pressures and stipulations that come into to dealing with this, but this confronta- pedagogy, cultural politics and collective welcome a revisiting of this piece from a and the difficulties this presented for non- Krauss shared with me that it was the mo- play when activities usually taking place tion with our public audience brings out action. She is currently a member of the on the margins of discursive programming more questions about the for whom in our Gendai Gallery Programming Committee become the main event. practice: Is it for fellow Read-in members or and is working towards completion of a Master in Visual Studies at the University [2] Current active members [4] Sojourner Truth’s Standard newspaper (2 May I a Woman,” Internet more ‘normal’ to hearers Joan Scott and Judith Butler In considering the for whom, for more general and diverse public partici- of Read-in include Hyunju speech “Ain’t I a Woman” 1863) and in Elizabeth Modern History Sourcebook, who want to forget the (New York: Routledge, of Toronto. Chung, Annette was originally delivered at Cady Stanton, Susan B. archived by Paul Halsall diasporas that populated 1992), 97. perhaps the most challenging aspect of pation? For the principles of representing Krauss, Serena Lee, Laura the Women’s Convention, Anthony and Matilda (online). the New World.” Haraway, collective reading in a highly public envi- legacies of radical pedagogies? To experi- Pardo, Marina Stavrou and Akron, OH, 1851. The !rst Joslyn Gage, eds., History of “Ecce Homo, Ain’t (Ar’n’t) ronment is that aside from the people we ment with new artistic discursive forms? Hilde Tuinstra. two transcriptions reprinted Woman Suffrage, vol. 1 [6] Further, Donna I a Woman, and in the Read-in handout (New York: Fowler & Wells, Haraway suggests about the Inappropriate/d Others: the invited to join, we had no idea who would Just as my analysis here is particular to [3] Casco’s Grand were both authored by Mrs. 1882). standard English Human in a Posthumanist be participating. By taking on a practice that my experiences as one member of Read-in Domestic Revolution F. D. Gage and published in translation, “Perhaps this Landscape,” in Feminists calls into question the borders between at this particular time and for this particu- project in Utrecht. the National Anti-Slavery [5] Sojourner Truth, “Ain’t language seems less racist, Theorize the Political, eds. public and private spaces, as demon- lar column, the for whom would indeed be

COLUMN FUSE / 36 – 4 Decolonial Aesthetics / TANAKA

44 45 coup d’état and the overthrow on two adjoining walls — writing, were killed for their acts of oppressions and resistances in of Mosadegh’s populist erasing and rewriting selections dissent, which resulted in Iran, but also tie these events to government. In an immersive of the archival texts with chalk. contributions from many parts other lives similarly injured Border Cultures: Part One installation, on sixty sheets of The process was captured on of the world. The website around the world. Hashemi’s (homes, land) Gita Hashemi’s paper, Hashemi painstakingly camera and projected on the remains open for participation, seminal artworks in Time debossed the CIA text by hand, third adjoining wall, and a collecting and expanding a Lapsed create a venue for Time Lapsed and revealed it through the dedicated website collected living oral history, while collective remembrance, application of drawing material. contributions in English and embodying a monument for understanding and solidarity. Group Exhibition In doing so, she not only Farsi, which were then incorpor- reflection and recovery. They chart new, inclusive, mind- Curated by Srimoyee Mitra embodied the text, but also ated in Hashemi’s performance. Of Shifting Shadows: ful and empowering territories Art Gallery of Windsor, Windsor ON editorialized it through the Dimly lit and colourless, Returning to the 1979 Iranian in (hi)story telling, revealing the 25 January–31 March 2013 selective application of colour, Ephemeral Monument stood in Revolution through an Exilic shared humanity that connects facilitating a new reading of the stark contrast to the brightness Journey in Memory and History us regardless of locality, national Solo exhibition at narrative. The piece also included of Headquarters in the adjacent (2001), is a multichannel narra- identity or geopolitical struggles. Review by Sasha Opeiko A Space Gallery, Toronto. a live reading performance of the space. This installation had an tive that interweaves animated Finally, to fulfill her 1–30 March 2013 CIA text, interwoven with immersive quality as well, text, video, audio, graphic intentions for the project, revisionist analyses and enhanced by the ambient frames and archival and Hashemi facilitated a discus- eyewitness accounts from a sound of the artist’s footsteps reconstructed stills. Of Shifting sion circle that engaged artists volunteer cast whose personal entering and exiting the frame, Shadows narrates the story of and activists in a conversation histories have been tarnished and the sounds of writing and the Iranian Revolution through about decolonizing — subverting by the traumas of colonialism. erasing. The selected texts, the voices of four fictional the gallery space to one of Thus, while the intensely lit which ranged from political to female characters, connecting collective reflection and installation invited visitors to personal and poetic, were actual events with their subjec- empathy, further connecting her Review by Haleh Niazmand become immersed in reading significant in the Iranian tive, psychological and sensory art with the communities that the shimmering text, the voices dissident movement against impressions. The semi-private she is invested in. coming from the nearby video the Pahlavi regime, both in their viewing arrangement of this disturbed this process. In effect, origination and influence. work creates a relationship the performance innovated a Recording the ritual on video, between the observer and the Haleh Niazmand is an artist and curator # Gita Hashemi’s Time of a history of violence and form of revisionist history, first a medium of documentation characters, where the viewer who has exhibited widely in venues Ed Pien. Memento, 2009. Lapsed analyzes principal trauma, and its cascading by contesting the singularity of and evidence, spotlighted the becomes a listener and a including the San Diego Museum of Art, Installation view in group exhibition Border Cultures: Part One historic events in Iran and effect on individual and the CIA account, and then by forgotten texts in new, dynamic witness to their experiences the Center for Contemporary Arts Santa (homes, land), 2013. Curated by Srimoyee Mitra for the Art Gallery of Windsor. Fe and Des Moines Art Center. She has channels them into insights collective psyches. interjecting an emotional dimen- contexts. In this way, Ephemeral and traumas. Thanks to this Image courtesy of the Art Gallery of Windsor. published in ART PAPERS, US Art, that are as personal as they A site-specific installation, sion rarely felt through historical Monument was not a mere intimacy, the observer is Photographed by Frank Piccolo. X-TRA, Radical History Review, FUSE are political. In this exhibition, Headquarters: Pathology of an analysis or in written text. tribute to once-influential provided with the opportunity Magazine, the Washington Post and Hashemi’s mindful strategies Ouster (2013), was completed This performance, which writings; instead, it opened up to understand the events of the San Francisco Chronicle. During a Border Cultures: Part as a stage for activating new engage the audience in an during the course of its took place on the opening a space to reflect on the ideals Iranian Revolution — a movement 1998–2000 residency at Des Moines One (homes, land), the first in intersections. The exhibition inclusive experience. Consisting exhibition. The project draws night, was webcast live and that emerged from and influ- for democracy and indepen- Art Center, Niazmand designed and a three-part annual exhibition can be thought of as a curato- of three substantial artworks, on recently declassified CIA later incorporated into the enced a history of turmoil. dence — through the perspective implemented numerous collaborative series, brought together an rial experiment, consisting of a projects and workshops with marginalized Time Lapsed situates current documents which chronicle the exhibition as a video entitled The lowbrow medium of of secular women, whose communities, including residents at a ambitious combination of ten modular collection of rhizomes. Iran-US relations in the context masterminding of Iran’s 1953 Ouster Remixed (2013). Hence, chalk not only allowed the artist voices have since been largely state mental hospital and children’s projects, including works by Like a microcosmic culture of with nuanced attention to to informally lead into weighty silenced. Of Shifting Shadows homes. She founded Gallery Subversive artists from the local border re- cells, it is contained together not $ historical revelations, Head- philosophical implications, it also highlights the singularity of in 2003 and from 2005 to 2011 directed gion of Windsor/Detroit along- for any useful end but as a kind Gita Hashemi, Modesto Junior College’s art gallery. Ephemeral Monument, 2013. quarters as a whole examined also carried a plethora of its characters’ copings, and the side others from Canada, US, of means or model. Image courtesy of the artist. the events of the past with psychological associations. varying lives they created in Mexico, Ireland and Palestine. As an object, a mo- retrospective reflections. The These associations began in exile. By doing so, it illuminates Concurrently on exhibit were del is externalized, much in the cast of performers connected our youth, where chalk was the a complex narrative that is The Border Bookmobile Public same way that the imposition or with the audience by revealing authoritarian medium in contrary to the West’s stereo- Archive and Reading Room intent of a border at the point of their scars and post-traumatic schools, delivering what was typical rendition of the revolution (2009–2013), an ongoing proj- conception is already appended reflections, paving the way for deemed important to educate as an Islamist uprising. As a ect by Lee Rodney in collabora- with organisms external to the the audience to engage as or indoctrinate. Chalk also work of art, Of Shifting Shadows tion with Mike Marcon, and A mechanics at play. I borrow the witnesses in the process of allowed the young a public emphasizes the subservience River That Separates? Imaging idea of appropriated exterior- decolonizing and healing. voice, as a mischievous vehicle of technology to content and the Detroit River, 1804–2001, an ity from Deleuze and Guattari’s Ephemeral Monument of self-assertion. For Hashemi, the marriage of intellectual AGW collections exhibit curated chapter “1227: Treatise on (2008) is a video and perfor- the ritual of writing, erasing and awareness and emotional by Catharine Mastin. Panel Nomadology: — The War mance installation using a rewriting with chalk pays imprints while innovating a discussions and a conference Machine” in A Thousand Plateaus. selection of underground homage to her personal mode of storytelling that defies introduced a variety of themes, The war machine refers not so dissident literature from the involvement with the dissident the masculine linear process viewers, speakers, artists and much to mechanical processes Iranian Student Association of movement and the collective that has dominated the images from regional and global of war as it does to formless- Northern California (1964– uprising that profoundly narration of history and the contexts. The conversation ness and force as general 1984) as well as pre-1979 influenced her generation. history of narration. revolved around nationhood, principles that can be adopted Iranian resistance poetry. Ephemeral Monument Each coherent on its own, migration and the politics of by mechanical means. Defined For this installation, Hashemi invited the audience to write the artworks in Time Lapsed not exclusion, with the objective of by Deleuze and Guattari as pure created a performance ritual about friends and family who only reflect upon traumatic using the local border culture exteriority, the war machine is

REVIEWS FUSE / 36 – 4 Decolonial Aesthetics REVIEWS / NIAZMAND / OPEIKO 46 47 outside of the state appara- semblance. The curatorial com- indoors. Temporarily immobi- one of the hexagons. At the and little more about the girls events were illustrating that tus, or society as we know it, position is not so much about lized, the van-based archive moment of placement, then, who started it. What has been we can’t all just get along. which is made interior, named reciprocity between the works becomes a fully equipped inter- the forms are already defined written has almost exclusively In Space Fiction & the and given points. The nomad is as it is about the modeling of active library of books, images, by the active potential of being come from the point of view of Archives, which is comprised of described as existing between unclaimed space between ter- interviews with local residents elsewhere and outside them- On Resisting: the colonizer. Yet the girls’ historical artifacts and docu- points, reterritorializing on de- ritories. and other cross-border artifacts. selves, while they are simul- Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen, weapon — laughter — eventually mentation as well as a video territorialization itself. [1] The installation Memento Territorializing on organic flows taneously dependent on the the Archive and Why the Truth Is shut down the school (and titled 1967: A People Kind of The Efflorescence (2012) (2009) by Ed Pien (Canada), of storytelling, the Bookmobile limitations of their framework, other institutions), prov- Place (2012), Nguyen shows series by Iftikhar and Elizabeth like the Efflorescence series, devises a linguistic anthology, regardless of situation. Stranger Than Fiction ing it an effective means of the audience another break in Dadi (US) demonstrates this also integrates light as an classifying to internalize while The incongruous effect of resistance, which Nguyen the weave of national narrative. kind of exteriority. The series agent of structuring ambigu- simultaneously renouncing Border Cultures lies in assum- celebrates in her piece. In 1967, the residents of consists of neon lights shaped ous space. Memento is drawn ownership for public acces- ing a conventional contemporary Fast-forward a few years St. Paul, Alberta, were building as flowers, referring to na- from research into the pre- sibility. The Bookmobile is art gallery method, which is a For An Epidemic Resistance in to 1967. Canada is poised to the world’s first UFO landing tional symbols: the magnolia cariousness of illegal migrants, nomadic both inside and out form of colonial territorializa- organized by Kari Cwynar celebrate its centennial and pad “to welcome everybody for North Korea, the clover for whose social legitimacy is as because it is not geographically tion, as an attempt to decipher a apexart, New York all across the country citizens from this earth, and also Ireland, &c. Each is a boxlike illusive and unmapped as their or socially specific. It is not much greater reality that repels 23 May–27 July 2013 and institutions are creating extraterrestrial beings, if there unit holding its emblem, but the migratory transgressions. The oriented in either Windsor or classification. This is modulated projects in honour of their are any.” Meanwhile, Trudeau, in light infects and spills over installation uses video pro- Detroit, and contains material in an externalized construction Space Fiction & the Archives colonial history. We are in an an effort to render immigration like a species. It is difficult to jections that are reflected in relevant to other border regions that is in turn internalized and AXENÉO7, Gatineau age of heterochrony: while policy free of racial discrimina- distinguish whether the edge hanging round mirrors, which in the world. The Bookmobile reterritorialized, becoming a 27 March–21 April 2013 Canadians were celebrating tion, introduced the “points- is at the origin of light or at the rotate organically and displace documents the evolution of self-reflexive cluster of mock- Traveling 100 years of sovereignty from based system,” which attempted farthermost periphery of the the static entity of the images international border fortification ups that cross compares and the Crown, First Nations people to relieve the pressures of fade. The outline pollinates into fluid suspension. In the and its influence on cultural and cross-pollinates within itself. were formulating the Brown sponsored immigration, and the surrounding space in the video, drawings of Pien wading existential exchange. “It is in terms not of inde- Paper in response to Canadian which tallied a hopeful immi- same way that the interior bulbs through a torrent of waves The School in Exile (2011) pendence, but of coexistence Prime Minister Trudeau’s infa- grant’s worth on the basis of pollinate into each other. The are used to metaphorically project presented by Campus in and competition in a perpetual Review by Amber Berson mous 1969 White Paper, which personal qualities, education, light extends rhizomatically, model the fragility of the human Camps (Palestine) is likewise field of interaction, that we proposed dismantling the training, age and occupational “between things, interbeing, body in the face of boundless translated in the gallery as an must conceive of exteriority Indian Act and breaking down demand in Canada. In short, intermezzo,” [2] always resist- exteriority. A network of ropes open propositional document, and interiority, war machines of established legal relationships Canada was theoretically open ing its points of origin as well is hung and tied into a web represented photographically, metamorphosis and State appa- between First Nations people to everyone, even if you had no as its destination, but contained throughout the room, casting textually and as a plastic, three- ratuses of identity… The model I’ve wanted to write lured into a laughing fit amidst and the Canadian govern- prior ties to the country. This and constant. shadows and entangling the dimensional, interactive model. in question is one of becoming something about the work of the artwork. The actual laughing ment. While millions of people sentiment is echoed in the Walking through the gal- viewer in a bifurcation of dark School in Exile is an education and heterogeneity, as opposed Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen for epidemic took place in 1962, in were flooding Montreal’s Expo UFO-oriented welcome mes- lery, Efflorescence is always interior and luminous exposure. and architecture experiment to the stable, the eternal, the a long time. Since before I a remote village in the north- 67 — whose motto “Man and sage of St. Paul’s mayor, even if glowing in the margins, reflect- This creates a spatial effect that in the Shu’fat refugee camp, a identical, the constant. It is a saw her show at AXENÉO7 eastern edge of modern-day His World” was meant to it did not reflect the actual reality ing off the floor or signalling entices the viewer to negotiate deterritorialized in-between area ‘paradox’ to make becoming (Gatineau, 2013), and even Tanzania. The town was part of symbolize multiculturalism, of immigration in Canada. from across the expanse of the pathways through the netting, that is neither inside nor out- itself a model, and no longer before Space Fiction & the the Republic of Tanganyika — openness and world harmony — In watching 1967: A exhibition space. It charges and in a confusion of inside and side the boundaries of Jerusa- a secondary characteristic, a Archives was shown at VOX a sovereign state that existed the Vietnam War, the Cold War, People Kind of Place, it be- breaks up the narrow linearity outside space. lem. Attempting to build on this copy.” [4] (Montreal, 2012). In my cura- for only two years in Eastern the American civil rights move- comes clear that the Martian of the other horizontally ar- The more socially acti- vulnerability, the architectural torial capacity, I had tried hard Africa. Tanganyika was formed ment, global student protests, landing pad built in Alberta is ranged displays, such as Post- vated projects, which are most design is based on circularity to program her work For An following independence from Che Guevara’s death and other symbolic of the blind spots in cards from the Edge (1990–) by effective outside the gallery without an authoritarian agen- Epidemic Resistance (2009), the United Kingdom a year Sasha Opeiko, with her post-Communist Marcos Ramirez Erre (Mexico/ setting, are appropriated into da. An interlocking arrangement about a laughter epidemic earlier. The outbreak of laughter, $% Belorussian roots, has never fully adjusted Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen, US) and the Minoru (2012) se- the exhibition model. Remap- of identical hexagon-shaped to postmodern Canada and continues to which took place in 1962 in or mass hysteria as it is some- Space Fiction & the Archives (2012). ries by Christopher McNamara ping the Illegitimate Border classrooms gives “a spatial question the etymological function of Kashasha, Tanzania. On her times described, lasted for six Film and installation of archival material. (Canada/US), which are placed (2012–2013) by Dylan Miner tension between an inside objects. She received her BFA (Honours) website, Nguyen states that months and first occurred at a Image courtesy of the artist. directly across each other. While (US/Canada), for example, is and outside, the camp and the in Visual Arts from the University of the piece was influenced by mission-run boarding school for Windsor in 2009, followed by an MFA in one might expect this specific a mobile serigraphy project home village, life in exile and Visual Arts from the University of Victoria social and cultural historian girls, then spread to surround- reflective arrangement to be that requires the participa- the desire of return.” [3] The in 2012. She sustains an active artistic Marjolein Hart’s assertion that ing villages. If we follow Hart’s restrictive (like a corridor), tion of Latino and Indigenous three-dimensional interactive practice in Windsor, Ontario, while laughter “functions as a true thesis that laughter “functions these works, along with the communities on both sides of model of the campscape incites maintaining an avid interest in critical ‘weapon of the weak.’” With that as a true ‘weapon of the weak,’” other projects in the exhibit, the US/Canada border. It is the viewer to manipulate the writing, poetry, academic incoherence, statement, and her interest in we can choose to read the girls’ alchemical philosophy, modern psycho- are conceptually autonomous. here presented as a sculptural hexagonal shapes into new analysis, vital materialism, thing theory, how the weak fight back and laughter as a form of resistance The space between is filled installation, a static residue configurations of space as they entropy and other mechanics of resist, I became irresistibly against their patriarchal soci- with perceptual intersections, awaiting re-deterritorialization. fit into a mapped pattern. Each ephemeral knowledge. enthralled by Nguyen’s work. ety and the colonizers at their and the viewer is guided to Similarly, The Border Bookmo- figure could be set into a static It is Nguyen’s assertion mission-run institution. While look in all directions, activating bile Public Archive and Reading point gridded on the platform, of the power of resistance that the Republic of Tanganyika was movement while searching for Room brings the bookmobile but could potentially fit into any draws viewers into her practice. a free state, the influence of the In For An Epidemic Resistance, colonizer was still present by a 25-channel sound installa- way of the mission school and [1] Gilles Deleuze and Félix repr., Minneapolis: University of [3] Alessandro Petti, “Shu’fat [4] Deleuze and Guattari, Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Minnesota, 2011), 381. School,” Campus in Camps A Thousand Plateaus, 360–361. tion in which each speaker, other institutional programs. Capitalism and Schizophrenia, website. hung from the ceiling, plays a Very little is known about the trans. Brian Massumi (1987; [2] Ibid., 25. laughing voice, the audience is Kashasha laughing epidemic,

REVIEWS FUSE / 36 – 4 Decolonial Aesthetics REVIEWS / OPEIKO / BERSON 48 49 the Canadian national narrative, with then Minister of National and that it was a project cele- Defence Paul Hellyer. In her brating settler colonial history. film, Nguyen invites Hellyer In the text that accompanied to reread his 1967 speech for Space Fiction & the Archives, the opening of the launch pad, Who is Dayani Cristal? Liz Park mentions that the town and then reflect on whether his of St. Paul, Alberta, had once opinions had changed over the been named St. Paul des Métis. course of 45 years. Hellyer, a In dropping “des Métis” from long-time advocate of declas- their official name, the town of sifying government documents St. Paul attempted to erase its about aliens, [1] had run for colonial history. This exhibit the Liberal candidacy against " challenges these types of era- Trudeau during the era that Who is Dayani Cristal? Migrants resting at the “Brother of the sures. Nguyen’s work, which saw the creation of the point Film (86 mins), 2012 Road” shelter, Ixtepec, Mexico. she aptly names “space fiction,” system, and his opinions on Directed by Marc Silver Film still, Who is Dayani Cristal? Film (86 mins), 2012. is not about telling fantastical immigration (extraterrestrial or Canadian Premiere at Hot Docs, Toronto Directed by Marc Silver. stories or even about altering otherwise) might have altered 27 April 2013 perceived truths — it is about the centennial narrative away making space for heterochronic from multiculturalism as a fictions, even the difficult ones. state policy that erases, or Despite her attention voluntarily forgets, the process and care for the research, the of colonization in Canada. artist states that she does not feel burdened with the need Review by Amber Landgraff to tell the truth. She believes that her role as artist is to Amber Berson’s current research focuses on artist-run culture and she find new truths, to disrupt the is working on a PhD in Art History at dominant narrative without Queen’s University. She works in and with The documentary Who is attention to the sheer number necessarily relying on pure artist-run centres, notably Eastern Bloc Dayani Cristal? follows staff of deaths that the war on im- facts. Nguyen’s work is about and articule, and most recently curated at the Pima County morgue in migration has caused over the the audience ever sees his argues that much money is illegally — how could it possibly Amber Landgraff is a Toronto-based curator and writer. She has an MFA in difficult subjects — she disrupts the Wild Bush Residency in Val-David, Arizona as they go through the last decade; over 200 unidenti- face, from descriptions pro- invested in the wall, yet the capture the experience with a Quebec, and Amden, Switzerland, In Your Criticism and Curatorial Practice and is the dominant narrative of our Footsteps at VAV Gallery, The Magpies process of identifying the body fied bodies are found each year, vided by the people who love wall is only ever going to be a well-known actor and a camera one of the organizers of FEAST Toronto, culture to destabilize colonial Nest at Wenger Homestead in Lancaster, of a migrant worker who died many of which will never be him, including how he courted dead investment. He questions crew? — this complaint partially an ongoing community dinner and discourse. Her aesthetic Pennsylvania, and We lived on a map… attempting to illegally cross identified. Policies around cre- his wife and his relationships what could be accomplished if comes from the overall cinematic microfunding event. She writes, often choices — clean lines and at the Centre for Ethnographic Research into the US. Unlike many of the mating unidentified bodies had with his mother, father, brother the same money was instead quality of the film. Following the about art, politics and labour, for both and Exhibition in the Aftermath of FUSE and C Magazine. smooth forms — are informed Violence (CEREV). She is also on the other bodies that end up in the to be changed in 2005 because and three young children. What invested in people. With so Hot Docs screening, several by our expectations of what editorial committee of .dpi, a feminist morgue, this particular body there wasn’t enough space to emerges is a picture of a loving many related deaths every year, questions were asked about belongs in a museum or journal of digital art and culture. had a unique and identifiable store such large numbers of un- husband and father, who made this is a simple and powerful the veracity of García Bernal’s archive, but her works resist the tattoo across the chest which identified remains. The result is the difficult decision to leave his question — and a strong state- journey, whether the people whitewashed stories that are read “Dayani Cristal.” This was that people who are dehuman- family because of the circum- ment in support of immigration seen and interviewed were also customarily presented there. the first clue in the search for ized in life remain dehumanized stances of his youngest son reform — that asks how many actors and what kind of crew While Nguyen tackles new his identity, and in the journey in death, scores of John Does suffering from cancer. The film lives have to be lost before we was required for the filming. research with the same metho- to return him to his family. who will never make it home. follows the process of Yohan’s begin to see it as too much to Director Marc Silver pointed out dological drive as historians and With immigration a hot- By focusing on the man with body being returned to Hondu- lose. This is also highlighted by that despite the stunning cin- anthropologists do, she is also button topic in the US, focus the tattoo, and following the ras, and it is only then that the the fact that Yohan’s body was ematic quality of the film, it was deeply invested in storytelling. is often placed on the image process of finding out who he audience finally sees his face, found only a thirty-minute car actually made with a very small Space Fiction & the Archives is of the border wall between was and what led to his body as family members place his ride away from Tucson; if the crew, and often shot with only the result of a two-year research Mexico and America, the best being left in the desert, the photograph on the coffin during crossings hadn’t been made one camera, operated by Silver. project that had her digging protection against the so- film does a masterful job of his memorial. more difficult by the federal While this re-creation may seem in archives and speaking with called never-ending threat of providing an intimate glimpse The moment that Yohan’s government’s crackdowns, an awkward choice, García Ber- residents of St. Paul as well as nameless, faceless enemies of the tattooed man (nick- face is finally shown is also the which included more invest- nal is intended to function as with a UFO study group and sneaking into the States. In named “Yohan”) and his life. moment in which the meaning ment in high-tech surveillance an audience surrogate, provid- mainstream discourse, mi- What stayed with me most of his tattoo is revealed to the equipment and building harder- ing a stand-in for an audience grants attempting the crossing are the interviews with Yohan’s audience in voiceover: Dayani to-cross fences, Yohan’s death who will likely never undergo are too often discussed in the family — his wife, brother, mother Cristal is his daughter’s name, could have been prevented. such a trip, in order to see and [1] Hellyer also famously accused human beings tried to contact Stephen Hawking of covering up aliens, they could invade us and abstract and en masse, while and father. The unconventional tattooed across his heart. This The third narrative thread feel what the experience would alien contact, stating “the reality is take away our most important the individual reasons that drive format of the documentary narrative choice is significant, in the documentary is a re- be like from the position of an that [aliens have] been visiting resources, and warned that aliens them to undertake the danger- places these interviews along- as the film consistently asserts creation of Yohan’s journey insider rather than an objective Earth for decades and probably might be here try to conquer and millennia and have contributed colonize Earth. See Fay ous crossing in spite of the side the investigation, so that the importance of Yohan’s as undertaken by Gael García observer. Given the film’s goal considerably to our knowledge.” Schlesinger, “Stephen Hawking: risks are boiled down to the the audience knows all along personhood, and builds audi- Bernal. While some reactions to of humanizing migrants, this (“Ex-Defence Minister Defends Earth Could Be at Risk of an cliché of the American Dream. that he will eventually be identi- ence investment in the particu- the documentary criticize this becomes a striking, if poten- Aliens, Says Hawking Wrong,” Invasion by Aliens Living in The Canadian Press [2 May 2010] ‘Massive Ships,’” MailOnline (26 The documentary plays an fied. These interviews reveal larity of Yohan’s story and his re-creation for not accurately tially unsuccessful, choice. online); Hawking suggested that if April 2010; online). important role in bringing real much about Yohan long before return home. Yohan’s brother capturing the reality of crossing

REVIEWS FUSE / 36 – 4 Decolonial Aesthetics REVIEWS / BERSON / LANDGRAFF 50 51 In Memoriam: Arlan Londoño (1962 – 2013)

When I first met Arlan, he was more of an anarchist and things, which I never had a use for in the arts, but proved useful more confrontational, although always friendly and with his mea- for life. In the heat of Cuba, Arlan never stopped wearing black, not sured way of seeing, thinking and acting. It was 1996 and Colombia there nor in Merida, Yucatan, at 40 degrees in the shade (although was in the midst of devastation, bloodshed everywhere, paramili- he did take off his Converse, replacing them with Mayan sandals). taries and guerillas kidnaping and killing, corrupt governments focusing on their pockets and image, and we art professionals still I think that it was in Toronto where Arlan perfected his somehow transfixed by contemporary art, the white box and the method. He couldn’t have been in better company: Julieta, his international scene. Arlan’s contribution to the national Salon of brightest star, a piece of the Caribbean in the cold North. He rapidly Colombian Artists that year was a kettle of black vultures, which he built a network. Exile brings about the best of you (sometimes also painted on the cornices, corners, borders and edges of the exhibi- the worst). His America became clearer, his interests expanded: tion space. The title of the piece was Phoenix, 1995-1996. New media, art that is socially and politically committed, work that is carried out in networks, horizontally and collaboratively. Along with A few years later, we saw each other again in Manizales, Julieta, he founded e-fagia. These spaces that were created digitally a small colonial city (in every sense of the word) embedded in (with one’s fingers, as we say in the south to underscore an ele- the central mountain range of the Colombian Andes. Arlan was a ment of precarity in this work) are testimony of his commitment. professor at the National University there. He was still the same, dressed in black, as anarchist as ever and even more outspoken After our encounter in Havana, we saw each other politically. His light came on when he was in good company. Sur- repeatedly. Always with clear objectives, without excuses, we rounded by brilliant minds, many of whom he helped polish, Arlan would act, build, collaborate. Arlan was clear about something: the was, as much as anything, a jeweler, with great intuition and always ones who have survived and have possibilities are in debt to the in search of raw gemstones. Always sharing everything and commit- ones who have none, who have no voice. We dedicate our efforts to ted to his gregarious role, he worked for the benefit of the crowd so the ones who have been made subordinates. With humility, without that others would shine, while he remained behind the scenes. mediation, with the heart.

We met again in Havana in 2006. Both of us had been Compa, as the Phoenix — until next time, expelled from Colombia. He had served tables, washed dishes and done odd jobs in NYC until he grew tired and moved, undocument- – Miguel Rojas-Sotelo ed, to Toronto. I had learned carpentry and plumbing amongst other

On Thursday 23 May 2013, Arlan projects like DystoRpia, Sub_version, aesthetics. We watched his enthusiasm in Londoño, the co-founder and curator of In_dependence and Displacement; organizer initiating this project, and it is in his hon- e-fagia organization, passed away suddenly of new media exhibitions like the Digital our that we bring it to fruition. in his home in Toronto. Arlan has been one Event series (2006–2013), Videophagy As his friends, we will always of the pillars of our organization and an (2009) and Pan-Americas (2010); editor of remember him as a generous, endless inspiration to all of us. As an artist, curator numerous publications with e-fagia and conversation partner, a frustrated dancer, and activist, he struggled everyday in the of the web issue of Disfagia Magazine; a polemicist, a drinker of coffee with rum, arts to create projects at an impossible photography and video workshop facilitator; a music and film enthusiast, an insatiable rate; projects that established a dialogue web developer; member of the board of di- and imaginative reader, a joker, a confidant. with their social context and were rooted rectors and programming committee of the We will miss his smile, his laughter and his in the real experiences of daily life. He was aluCine film and media festival; collaborator way to challenge us with his honest criti- a friend like no other — always acting as a of the Colombia Action Solidarity Alliance, cism. Goodbye, Arlan. You will always be in # bridge, linking diverse communities, artistic to name only the most significant ones. our hearts. Arlan Londoño, Fénix (Phoenix), disciplines and activists around his projects. As the architect for the sym- 1995–1996. His activities in these last few posium on Decolonial Aesthetics of the – e-fagia organization Vinyl paint on wall. Variable Dimensions. years are almost too many to list: co- Americas, Arlan was deeply invested in Image courtesy of the artist. founder of e-fagia; co-founder of No Media thinking through the meaning of decolo- Collective; originator of interdisciplinary art nization as linked to culture, politics and

FUSE / 36 – 4 Decolonial Aesthetics

52 53 These brutal appropriations appear in the 53rd Internationale Kurzfilmtage include a (re)mapping of the colonial stark contrast with the pastoral fantasy Oberhausen (Oberhausen, Germany), state through creative interventions PROJECT STATEMENTS of the untouched wilderness suggested Home Works IV (Ashkal Alwan, Beirut, within concepts of native space. Cur- by the image of Rigoberta Menchú Lebanon), TEOR/éTica (Costa Rica), rent SSHRC research projects include Why we write for FUSE Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa riding a sleigh. Rather than merely and Casa América (Madrid). He is a Canadian performance and political inverting colonial iconographic logic as recipient of a 2011 Guggenheim fel- theory and Indigenous digital and new The Soiled Queen (2010). a way to seek legitimation by reversal, lowship and was recently awarded the media. Nagam’s creative practices Photo credit: Naufus Ramírez- Ramírez-Figueroa inhabits this fraught illy Present Future prize at Artissima include working in mixed media, such Figueroa in collaboration with repertoire of images, turning them 19, which will result in an exhibition at as drawing, photography, painting, Proyectos Ultravioleta and inside out. The trace of this habitation Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contem- sound, projections, new and digital is a figure/ground dynamic splashed porary Art in November of 2013. media. Her work where white pines Juan Brenner. with snow, blood, grass and shit. lay, was shown in San Paulo, Brazil, and (pages 11 & 13) — Francisco-Fernando Granados Julie Nagam Lyon, France, in 2013. Her installation (pages 3, 22, 23) singing our bones home is part of LAND|SLIDE (Markham) and Ecocen- trix (London, England), both 2013.

FUSE is one of the few Canadian I write for FUSE because it creates a Beyond presenting political questions magazines I honestly want to support. Taking bold critical space for articulating a contextual, politicized as art’s “content,” FUSE supports a vital place to editorial choices that puts politics and aesthetics engagement with the expanded field of the visual. write in the present and “stay with the trouble.” Still first, I believe in their integrity and their ability to Francisco-Fernando Granados considered taboo, those messy entanglements adapt and survive in the face of 21st century of art, work and life can be unpacked publicly in The sound and new media journalism. the pages of FUSE. installation where white pines lay over Amy Fung Maiko Tanaka the water is an exploration of different methodologies in cartography and geography that bring forth different epistemological views. The focus of this artwork has relied on the importance of orality and embodied knowledge that is a part of Indigenous theory, Collages from the series knowledge and praxis. The purpose of La Reina Ha Muerto, el Alce la this installation is to narrate Indigenous Mato (2010). 16.5 x 23 inches stories of place in the city of Toronto through an Indigenous perspective, each, from a series of 23. Photo which challenges linear, fact-based credit: courtesy of the artist. settler accounts of the history of the (page 12) city. Searching the land for an Indig- enous history in a city that perpetually In the double performance transforms is a daunting and difficult photograph The Soiled Queen and task. To further compound the growing its series of accompanying collages, cityscape, the Indigenous history of La Reina Ha Muerto, el Alce la Mato, the land is situated in many conflicting artist Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa guts stories from historians, archeologists, the imaginary space of the Common- Indigenous nations and competing Because the mix of art and politics is Consumption mediates production. I write for FUSE because its one of wealth, figuring the colonial relationship ethnic groups. All of these associations always current and offers a healthy contrast to I was weaned on FUSE and Canadian Forum in the few publications that provides opportunities between Guatemala and Canada. Lush, want to lay a claim to the area and link more mainstream venues for critical writing. And the 80s and 90s. for grassroots community voices to explore and playful and macabre, the works were their knowledge to the territory. As well, over the years, those behind the FUSE masthead Marc James Léger share issues that impact them while empowering conceived for his first solo exhibition there are numerous groups of people have been endlessly supportive, energetic and themselves through artistic processes. who seek to create an exciting, exotic in Guatemala City. The images are courageous in their editorial vision. Zainab Amadahy loosely based on childhood memories and romantic history in order to satisfy Randy Lee Cutler of standardized cultural assimilation tourism and promote interest in the city. Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa for newcomers through the persis- This installation encompasses Indi- lives and works between Guatemala tence of colonial iconographic tropes genous living histories that are linked

City and Vancouver. He holds a BFA & in the Canadian educational system. to the land, water and people. In this from Emily Carr University and an MFA The artist translates this iconography issue of FUSE, where white pines lay & from the School of the Art Institute for a Guatemalan public by embody- over the water is retold through a of Chicago. The Guatemalan civil war What would you say to a FREE issue with your subscription? Name: ing the Queen, decolonizing her selection of layered imagery drawn (1960 – 96) is a recurring subject in Subscribe today and we will send you one of our most recent Address: image through a queer re-staging. from the installation. his work. Although often softened by and well-received issues, 36 – 2 / Palestine-Palestine, part of City: Province: PC: The selection of images from an absurd and humorous approach, our States of Post Coloniality series! the series of collages presented for this Email: the work fails to conceal the force feature evokes history and landscape: Julie Nagam, PhD, is an Phone #: of history that precedes it. Ramírez- YES NO violence past and present against Assistant Professor at OCAD Univer- Figueroa has participated in various Please charge this to my: racialized bodies in direct relationship sity in the Indigenous Visual Culture solo and group exhibitions including 1 Year $20 ($14 savings from newsstand prices) Visa MasterCard Cheque enclosed to the domination of the landscape. program and her research interests 2 Years $30 ($38 savings from newsstand prices) Cardholder Number: Expiry: International subscribers please add $15 per year to cover extra postage Cardholder Name (if different from subscriber name) FUSE / 36 – 4 Or go to fusemagazine.org/subscribe Use “Why We Write for Fuse” drop down Return to: FUSE Magazine, 401 Richmond St. West, Suite 454, Toronto, ON M5V 3A8 54 Artists'

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