SOUNDINGS

Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts

Curated by Candice Hopkins and Dylan Robinson

Raven Chacon and Cristóbal Martínez, Sebastian De Line, Camille Georgeson-Usher, Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Kite, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Ogimaa Mikana, Peter Morin, Lisa C. Ravensbergen, Heidi Senungetuk, Olivia Whetung, and Tania Willard

Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts features newly commissioned scores, performances, videos, sculptures and sound by Indigenous and other artists who respond to this question: How can a score be a call and tool for decolonization? Unfolding in a sequence of five parts, the scores take the form of beadwork, videos, objects, graphic notation, historical belongings, and written instructions. During the exhibition these scores are activated at specific moments by musicians, dancers, performers and members of the public, gradually filling the gallery and surrounding public spaces with sound and action.

The exhibition is cumulative, limning an ever-changing community of artworks, shared experience and engagement as it travels. Soundings shifts and evolves, gaining new artists and players in each location. Some artworks have multiple parts, others change to their own rhythm as the exhibition grows.

At the core of the exhibition is a grounding in concepts of Indigenous land and territory. To move beyond the mere acknowledgement of land and territory here means offering instructions for sensing and listening to Indigenous histories that trouble the colonial imaginary. Soundings activates and asserts Indigenous resurgence through the actions these artworks call forth.

CURATORS Candice Hopkins is Senior Curator of the 2021 Toronto Biennial of Art. Dylan Robinson is the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Arts at Queen’s University.

For information contact Becky Nahom at becky@curatorsintl.org or call 212 254 8200.

Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts is a traveling exhibition curated by Candice Hopkins and Dylan Robinson, and organized by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University, Canada and ICI. The exhibition and tour are made possible, in part, with the generous support from ICI’s Board of Trustees and International Forum, with additional support for the exhibition by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts’ New Chapter Program, the Isabel and Alfred Bader Fund of Bader Philanthropies, the Ontario Arts Council, the City of Kingston Arts Fund through the Kingston Arts Council, and the George Taylor Richardson Memorial Fund at Queen’s University.

Soundings, installation view, Agnes Etherington Arts Centre, Kingston, 2019. Photo by Paul Litherland. Courtesy of AEAC and ICI.

Tania Willard, Surrounded/Surrounding, 2018, wood burning fire ring, laser etched cedar wood logs from Secwépemc Territory, relief print on paper on view at the Agnes Etherington Arts Centre. Gifted to Four Directions Aboriginal Student Centre, Kingston, 2019. Photo by Paul Litherland. Courtesy of AEAC and ICI.

Raven Chacon and Cristóbal Martinez, A Song Often Played on the Radio, film still, 2018. Courtesy of the artists.