Transits and returns

Vancouver Art Gallery, SEPTEMBER 28, 2019 - FEBRUARY 23, 2020

Artists: Edith Amituanai, Christopher Ando, Natalie Ball, BC Collective with Louisa Afoa, Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick with Nāpali Aluli Souza, Hannah Brontë, Elisa Jane Carmichael, Mariquita Davis, Chantal Fraser, Maureen Gruben, Bracken Hanuse Corlett, Taloi Havini, Lisa Hilli, Carol McGregor, Marianne Nicolson, Ahilapalapa Rands, Debra Sparrow and T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss

Transits and Returns presents the work of twenty-one Indigenous artists whose practices are both rooted in the specificities of their places and cultures of origin and routed via their artistic, embodied and intellectual travels. These forces of situatedness and mobility work in synergy and in tension with one another, shaping the multiple ways of understanding and being Indigenous today. Within the exhibition, these dual realities are explored via themes of movement, territory, kinship and representation, with many artworks inhabiting multiple categories. The resulting presentation foregrounds the creative sovereignty of each artist to determine their own articulations of the world, while also exploring the resonances between them.

Featuring artists from local First Nations as well as those from communities located throughout the Pacific region (ranging from Alutiiq territory in the north to Māori lands in the south, with many mainland and island Nations in between), Transits and Returns traces wide-ranging experiences that are inclusive of both ancestral knowledges and global connections. The artists presented extend and transform culturally distinct practices; cite local contexts with far-reaching implications; and look to the future by turning to the past. They imagine and create new worlds on the ground, across the waters and over the internet, for themselves and for others.

By providing an opportunity for exchange between the participating artists, curators and the public, this exhibition brings into dialogue the places where we are from, where we live and where we are guests. Part of this learning includes the active recognition that the Vancouver Art Gallery occupies the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm [Musqueam], Sḵwx̱wú7mesh [Squamish] and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ [Tsleil-Waututh] Nations, who have never surrendered their rights and title to these lands and waters.

This exhibition continues off-site at the Canada Line Vancouver City Centre Station with a graphic mural by Debra Sparrow, produced in partnership with the City of Vancouver Public Art Program and the Canada Line Art Program.

Transits and Returns is organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery in collaboration with the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane. The exhibition is curated by Tarah Hogue, Senior Curatorial Fellow, Indigenous Art with Sarah Biscarra Dilley, Freja Carmichael, Léuli Eshraghi and Lana Lopesi.

PUBLICATION

Transits and Returns exhibition catalogue Vancouver Art Gallery Online Store

128 pages; design by Steedman Designs

Texts by by Sarah Biscarra Dilley, Freja Carmichael, Léuli Eshrāghi, Tarah Hogue and Lana Lopesi; David Garneau and Kimberley Moulton; and Kahutoi Mere Te Kanawa and Marianne Nicolson

“…movement, which can be variously physical, conceptual and virtual, holds the capacity to reimagine the expansiveness of worlds beyond colonial borders. This is the domain that the artists in Transits and Returns actively inhabit. Both vigilant and visionary, their contributions transform and extend culturally distinct practices and offer novel artistic approaches.” —Sarah Biscarra Dilley, Freja Carmichael, Léuli Eshrāghi, Tarah Hogue and Lana Lopesi

PRESS

Amina Creighton-Kelly, “Knowledge Exchange across the Pacific Ocean,” Rungh Magazine

Jessica Johns, “Indigenous World-Building at the Vancouver Art Gallery,” Canadian Art

Julia Lum, “Transits and Returns,” c magazine

Tania Willard, “What's for - Decolonial - Dinner?” Contemporary Hum

Dorothy Woodend, “Home and Away,” Galleries West

PROGRAM

Great Ocean Dialogues, September 28-29, 2019

The Great Ocean is defined as a relational space by many Indigenous Nations. In Sḵwx̱wú7mesh sníchim, “shḵwen̓: shéwalh tl’a swá7am-chet” means “to cross a big ocean, the roads of our Ancestors.” In hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓, the ocean is referred to as “sʔəƛ̓qəl̕əc,” or “outside waters.” In te reo Māori, “Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa” is “the Great Ocean of Kiwa,” and in yakʔitʔɨnɨsmu tiłhinkʔtitʸu, “łpasini” translates to “the one ocean.”

Orienting ourselves toward the open waters, Great Ocean Dialogues begins from a generative refusal of the idea that the Pacific is a vacant space peripheral to imperialistic power and flows of capital. This event positions the Great Ocean as both a return to and a reimagining of our ancestral and current connections across cultural and geographic contexts. How can this concept contribute to shaping Indigenous contemporary art transnationally and from Indigenous perspectives? How can we create and sustain networks of support across the ocean? Where do our practices, knowledges and struggles for sovereignty align, and where do they diverge? And how do we honour our differences when seeking connection? This two-day gathering will feature conversations between local First Nations artists and knowledge keepers alongside international and Vancouver-based guests in order to explore these questions.

Great Ocean Dialogues is an Indigenous-led gathering produced in partnership between the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective / Collectif des commissaires autochtones, SFU Galleries and the Vancouver Art Gallery.

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