Chu Niikwän Artist Residency

Centred around the shared goal of artistic innovation, collaboration and professional development, the Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre (KDCC), the Yukon Arts Centre (YAC) and the Yukon Art Society, with the support of the Yukon government, partner to create the Chu Niikwän Artist Residency as part of their visual arts presentations. Chu Niikwän is a way of naming the Yukon River in Dákwänjē (Southern Tutchone), the main Indigenous language of this place. For the 3rd Chu Niikwän Artist Residency (August 24-Sept, 2020) these organizations opened spaces for three visual artists and a curatorial team to gather and develop an exhibition of new work. The 2020 artists were: Asad Chishti, Robyn McLeod, and Aimée Dawn Robinson, co-curated by Nicole Bauberger and Lori Beavis. COVID-19 demanded a new flexibility of us as we strove to make the dialogues around art that nourish us and our communities. While in previous years, each artist would access their own studio spaces in a venue near the Yukon river, this year’s use of studio space was more flexible. One of the three participated from her home studio in Ross River. The studio visits were replaced with the Zoom curatorial calls and the artists’ open studios evolved into socially-distanced participation in Whitehorse’s Wondercrawl (Sept 5). Making art that seized the opportunities found within physical distancing continued throughout the exhibition at the KDCC. The title speaks of our curatorial theme to come together by the river, tethered in a boat, dancing through textile-wrapped trees at the river’s edge, or sending a float plane with a dress to hand off to a curator to install on the shore. It also means coming together across cultures physically or virtually to create a space for dialogue between artists and curators; and between the artists themselves to share what the river could tell them about making and maintaining relationships.

Front cover: Robyn McLeod, Beaded Visor (2020). Asad Chishti, Then and Now : Water and a Name (2020). Photograph. Aimée Dawn Robinson, Seven. (2020). Dance, performance, costume, social engagement, installation.

01. Robyn McLeod, The Etandah Dress (2020). 24k gold and glass beads, moosehide, printed cotton, gold bamboo dupioni silk, silk polyester, hook and eye trim. Size 8.

02. Co-curator Nicole Bauberger installs artwork by Robyn McLeod for Wondercrawl on September 5, 2020. Photo by K. Newman.

03. A still frame from Charrettes in and around the Water (2020). Video, 6:26.

We acknowledge that we live, work and create on the traditional territories of the Kwanlin Dün First Nation and the Ta’an Kwäch’än Council.

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