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Chu Niikwän Artist Residency
Curators’ Statement This year, the Chu Niikwan artists in residence found the residency gave them both a new perspective on their social dimensions and furthered their individual artistic vision. The residency moved Aimée Dawn Robinson out of the customary quiet solitude of her cabin in the woods and visiting, hosting or collaborating with friends, other dancers and musicians during her residency. While in the residency she began to accumulate textiles and design her large-scale fabric costume piece. This work, assembled from fabric donated by the Whitehorse community, was danced at the exhibition’s opening by seven dancers, and then installed as a sculpture in the gallery. For Aimée, her residency at the Old Fire Hall differed from her home in being downtown – this was an urban residency for her, a chance to connect with other people. Robyn McLeod lives in Ross River, and for health reasons chose to do the residency remotely. Perhaps partly because of this, the social dimensions of the residency were important to her work too, in the process and content of her work. Robyn was active on the internet talking with friends, colleagues and mentors at the same time as restarting a daily drawing practice through which she created beading patterns and designed dresses. Robyn sewed a series of these dresses
for this exhibition. The connections made between women informs this fibres-based work. The first dress, the “Auntie Dress” (dedicated to her Auntie Virginia) was seen in-progress, as part of September’s Wondercrawl. The residency introduced Robyn’s artwork to a wider audience. Asad Chishti spent a lot of time doing research at the Energy, Mines and Resources library, looking at the history of the Whitehorse Dam, as well as biking a 4 a.m. loop of the city, creating playlists, and sitting tethered in their zodiak on the Yukon River. His work is more conceptual than physical, focussing on the conundrum of living in a place that takes its name from rapids that aren’t there anymore, rapids that have been tamed out of existence by the dam that powers the city. Asad had many conversations with people along the water about this question, and about how the river itself grew in importance to people sustaining themselves through the loneliness of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. For Asad, the residency experience was marked as a thoughtful time to ponder the Chu Niikwan and its evolving presence. Aimée’s dance performance at Wondercrawl, “Seven,” – named for the seven shots officer Ruston Shesky fired at Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Washington – evoked an uncanny silence among the viewers who
