Office for Contemporary Art Norway / Valiz

and Criticism and Indigenous Art, Curation Sovereign Words. Sovereign Words García-Antón Katya by Edited Tripura. Bikash Sontosh Tripura, Prashanta Tamati-Quennell, Megan Garneau, Biung Ismahasan, Kimberley Moulton, Máret Ánne Sara, Venkat Raman Singh Shyam, Irene Snarby, ÁndeDaniel Somby, Browning, Kabita Chakma, Megan Cope, Santosh Kumar Das, Hannah Donnelly, Léuli Māzyār Luna’i Eshrāghi, David Indigenous Art, Curation and Criticism Office for Contemporary Art Norway / Valiz With this publication we pay respect to our peers in Sápmi, as well as to the myriad Indigenous histories, presents and futures harboured in lands and oceans across the world. We acknowledge their Ancestors and the stories of survivance (survival, resistance and presence) in the face of colonial mechanisms that are still ongoing. We also honour the agency possible in the constitution of alliances between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities within the fields of culture and beyond. Sovereign Words. Indigenous Art, Curation and Criticism Edited by Katya García-Antón Office for Contemporary Art Norway Valiz, Amsterdam – 2018 7 Preface Katya García-Antón Sounding the Global Sovereign Histories Indigenous. Language, of the Visual Contemporaneity and Indigenous Art Writing 15 Can I Get a Witness? 63 Jođi lea buoret go oru. Indigenous Art Criticism Better in Motion than at David Garneau Rest. Iver Jåks 33 What Does or Should (1932–2007) ‘Indigenous Art’ Mean? Irene Snarby Prashanta Tripura 77 Toi te kupu, toi te mana, 47 History and Context of toi te whenua. The Madhubani (Mithila) Art Permanence of Language, Santosh Kumar Das Prestige and Land Megan Tamati-Quennell 97 Sovereignty over Representation. Indigenous Cinema in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh Kabita Chakma Statues, Maps, Stories Sovereign World-Building. and Laws. Critical Perspectives Acting Within and Beyond on Land Rights and Use Notions of the Curatorial 115 Hiding in Plain Sight. 191 I Can Still Hear Them Decolonising Public Calling. Echoes of My Memory Ancestors Daniel Browning Kimberley Moulton 129 Yarabinja Bujarang. 209 People Call Me Venkat Beautiful Sea Country Venkat Raman Singh Megan Cope Shyam 137 Indigenous Stories, 217 Ethno-Spatiality as Indigenous to Global Sovereignty. Curating Survival Performative Encounters Máret Ánne Sara with Taiwanese Indigenous 169 Where the Hard Meets Contemporary Art the Soft Biung Ismahasan Ánde Somby 232 MĀTAU ʻO 177 Indigenous Peoples’ Land TAUTUANAGA O Rights in Bangladesh. FAʻĀLIGA ATA MO O An Overview of the TĀTOU LUMANAʻI. Chittagong Hill Tracts Considering the Service of Sontosh Bikash Tripura Displays for our Futures Léuli Māzyār Lunaʻi Eshrāghi 252 Indigenous Futures and Sovereign Romanticisms. Belonging to a Place in Time Hannah Donnelly 268 Bibliographies 272 Biographies Sovereign Words Indigenous Art, Curation and Criticism 1 Facts drawn from the United Nations Per- manent Forum on Indigenous Issues. See ‘Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous Voices: Fact- sheet’, available online at: https://www.un.org/ esa/socdev/unpfii/doc- uments/5session_fact- sheet1.pdf Accessed 6 October 2018. Preface They have assumed the names and and epistemicidal mechanisms past and gestures of their enemies, but have present that inevitably impinge upon artistic held on to their own, secret souls; and frameworks. in this there is a resistance and an The publication Sovereign Words. overcoming, a long outwaiting. Indigenous Art, Curation and Criticism2 – N. Scott Momaday, House of Dawn, 1968 considers the complexities arising today in writing a canon of art history that declares Here is a lesson: what happens to itself as global. Sovereign Words convenes people and what happens to the land multiple Indigenous voices from across the is the same thing. planet to discuss the narrations of their – Linda Hogan, Dwellings: A Spiritual histories and presents against the context History of the Living World, 1995 of the Modernist and colonial ideologies that have framed them in the past, and which Our sovereignty is embodied, it is continue to attempt to do so today. From this ontological (our being) and episte- standpoint, the publication presents newly mological (our way of knowing), and it commissioned texts by Indigenous artists, is grounded within complex relations poets, story-tellers, performers, lawyers, derived from the intersubstantiation curators and scholars that reflect upon the of ancestral beings, humans and words, writing forms, spaces and processes land. In this sense, our sovereignty is through which their cultural and artistic carried by the body and differs from practices, their histories and contact points Western constructions of sovereignty, with the international art-historical canon which are predicated on the social have been and must be counter-narrated contract model, the idea of a universal today. supreme authority, territorial integrity With the expansion of the art-histori- and individual rights cal canons in academia, and the so called – Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Sovereign Subjects: Indigenous Sovereignty ‘Global Turn’ in international curating that Matters, 2007 ensued with the new millennium, in the last years the spotlight has also turned towards There are approximately 370 million practices and discourses emerging from Indigenous peoples on the planet, belonging Indigenous communities. In this process of to 5,000 different communities, in 90 nation art-world ‘Indigenisation’, artistic and other states worldwide. Indigenous peoples live cultural voices from Indigenous communi- in every region of the world, 0.006 per cent ties are increasingly sought after for exhi- in Europe, and about 70 per cent in Asia.1 bitions, festivals, biennials, art fairs, and Despite this global span, colonial powers by museums racing to consider the global expertly argue for the localness of reach of their art collections and practices. Indigenous experience, in order to fragment, Such a phenomenon has been spurred on isolate and render invisible these intellectual by the characteristic Modernist impulse to processes from the world’s stage. The sup- be universal and encyclopaedic, as much as pression of Indigenous world-views, histo- by a current search for alternative bodies of ries, stories, aesthetics and languages, the knowledge that might facilitate a reflection undermining of circular time-conceptions upon some of the most urgent crises of our and age-old knowledge systems, the repres- times. sion or co-opting of spiritual practices, as Indigenous artists, writers, and curators, well as the violent dispossessions of lands however, are not seeking acceptance from and waters and their colonial renaming and the hegemonic art-historical canon, but exploitation, stand out as recurring ecocidal recognition as custodians of ancient, highly 7 Preface influential and neighbourly discourses. ing during a six-day discursive programme Indigenous Criticism with a capital C, as within the context of the Dhaka Art Summit, the international mainstream knows it, has widely considered to be one of Asia’s most been emerging globally for more than thirty flourishing art forums. The programme years, and has inspired critical thinking and benefited from the advice and collaboration artistic movements that canonical practices of the Dhaka Art Summit (through its Chief have heralded as their own. Today, criticism, Curator Diana Campbell Betancourt) and artistic practices and curatorial processes Artspace, Sydney (through its Executive are being built with an awareness of entan- Director Alexie Glass-Kantor), with the kind gled perspectives, both Indigenous and support of the Australia Council for the Arts. non-Indigenous, and with the knowledge The resulting publication, Sovereign that Indigenous discourses are as kaleido- Words. Indigenous Art, Curation and scopic as the histories, colonial experiences Criticism, confronts some of today’s burning and daily realities that characterise their questions resulting from the shifting struc- myriad communities. An important point to tures of cultural and art communities, as take into consideration is the fact that the well as society at large across the world. ‘Indigenous Turn’ is regarded by many Contributors from four continents include Indigenous peers as a non-Indigenous Daniel Browning (Aboriginal journal- project: an introspective, discursive focus ist, radio broadcaster, documentary that this publication self-consciously recog- maker, sound artist and writer); Kabita nises and in which it intends to partake with Chakma (researcher, architect, writer critical respect that we hope will generate a and lecturer from the Chakma community much-needed level of cultural bi-linguality. in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangla- Sovereign Words. Indigenous Art, desh); Megan Cope (Quandamooka artist Curation and Criticism also acknowledges from North Stradbroke Island in Southeast the risks of misunderstanding and misap- Queensland); Santosh Kumar Das (artist propriation when non-Indigenous think- from the Madhubani region of Bihar); Hannah ers reach out to Indigenous knowledge; Donnelly (Wiradjuri writer and artist); Léuli indeed, these conflicts are addressed in Māzyār Luna’i Eshrāghi (artist, curator the publication from an Indigenous per- and writer from the Sāmoan archipelago, spective. Amongst the first of its kind, this Pārs plateau, Guandong delta and other compilation of Indigenous voices has been ancestries); David Garneau (Métis artist, built in dialogue with non-Indigenous writer, curator and Professor of Visual peers

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