EXHIBITION FROM JUNE 1 - 22, 2022

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KAYA JOAN: REFLECTIONS OF THE RIVER

>> ARCHIVE OF TRICKSTER
>> HUMBER WATER DANCE

WATCH THE VIDEOS BY CLICKING ON THE VIDEO PLAYER WINDOWS BELOW

Reflections of the River

Star and I are both in deep relationship with the Humber River. It is a huge source of inspiration for the work we create individually and collectively. For the past year we have been working together to hold space through the form of workshops, guiding people through processes of connecting to themselves and their surroundings. This process has brought us into many intimate conversations around reconnecting to land and community. Many of our conversations lead back to the river and the water as a primary source of knowledge and healing. Reflections of the River presents two video pieces, each reflecting our own experiences with the Humber River.

- kaya

"Archive of Trickster": Artist Statement

So many visual markers of place embedded within T’karonto’s urban infrastructure perpetuate narratives of settler dominance and ownership of land. Two pervasive examples around the mouth of the Humber;

heritage signs that exclusively acknowledge settler history, with little reference to the millenia of pre-contact history, Indigenous nation to nation relationships, treaty relationships, Indigenous past/presence/futures, and no acknowledgement of the colonial violence related to the settler occupancy, rather the language is often celebratory;

the city mandated “restoration sites” with accompanying “danger, keep off/out” signs. Who is at the table for deciding what is in need of restoration? Under what protocols is the land being ‘restored’ or ‘revitalized’?

Colonial archives are sites of erasure and misinformation, often because those who curate the archives have ulterior motives of exploitation, control and commodification.

Who is at the table for deciding what is in need of restoration? Under what protocols is the land being ‘restored’ or ‘revitalized’?

Archive of Trickster weaves together kaya’s observations of physical and digital archival imagery relating to projects of urbanization at the mouth of the Humber. Working with personal interactions with the land as an archive themselves*, the way they exists in the present, the indications of how they once were and how they would like to become (again).

This is the second project kaya has created under this title, inspired by Octavia Butler’s unwritten book “Parable of the Trickster”. Harnessing tools embedded in visionary and speculative fiction, world building and ancestral storytelling practices, this video collage of footage explores archives informed by land as sites of transformation. In this project, kaya a.k.a ‘spyke’, embodies the energy of a trickster, a being who moves outside of linear temporality and binary, to engage with “the archive” as an embodied experience of place.

*land as multifaceted being with agency

In this project, kaya a.k.a ‘spyke’, embodies the energy of a trickster, a being who moves outside of linear temporality and binary, to engage with “the archive” as an embodied experience of place.

Black and white illustration of text, spider webs, stick figures.

“The earth, the old trees, the rocks, and the waters, they heard of all those words that were put into wampum, they hold the wampum memory.”

-Rick Hill

“The archive is where things come and go, not a final resting place.”

-Ursula Johnson during artist talk facilitated by Lisa Myers for Finding Flowers

“The city filters the memory of land.”

-Whess Harman @ 2020 OCADU Artist talk

“What does reminding people of their duties (to keep the dish clean) look like?...What do you take into consideration before all else?”

-Ange Loft

ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES

KAYA JOAN

Kaya Joan is a multi-disciplinary Afro-Indigenous (Vincentian, Jamaican, Kanien'kéha:ka, Irish) artist, born, raised and living in T’karonto, Dish with One Spoon treaty territory. Kaya’s work focuses on exploring relationships and responsibility to place and storytelling. Black and Indigenous futurisms and speculative fiction are themes central to Kaya’s practice, as they map towards futures of abundance and joy for their kin. Kaya has been working in community arts for 7 years as a facilitator and artist, and is a member of Milkweed Collective.

STAR NAHWEGAHBO

Star Nahwegahbo is Anishinaabe, Scottish and English from Aundeck Omni Kaning First Nation, Ontario (part of the Robinson Huron Treaty), currently living in Tkaronto. Star is a mother, interdisciplinary artist, former Social Service Worker of 12 years, grassroots community organizer, and trained expressive arts facilitator. Star’s work explores the parallels of motherhood and land, grief and medicine, and the art of braiding ourselves back into our rightful place in creation. She acknowledges that her work is guided and co-created with ancestral and land based intelligence.

Star’s practice includes her Mother, Auntie and Grandmother, you will see them all represented in her headshot.

Star would like to acknowledge the following people who were part of the video: