Bridge Meditations and Flight Patterns
Video stills
Bridge Meditations is a walking and singing journey with Dawn Lavand (Anishinaabe) and Peatr Thomas (swampy cree).
The three video’s walk across the Arlington Bridge, Slaw Rebchuck bridge and Louise bridge as a way to open up conversations about navigating pathways between communities, the bridge as safe /sacred space and bird flight patterns. Bridge Meditations explores walking and singing to honor those who were here on this land before and to learn the stories/ songs of this land Treaty 1.
For my part, I was curious about traditional movement across and along the river, as well as my movement as a guest living on Treaty 1 Territory. This work is also about challenging the bridge as a Western European structure and investigating them as sites of personal transformation and decolonization through daily movement.
Installation at Wood Land School, Plug In Institute for Contemporary Art, Winnipeg, MB 2016.
Video triptych stills
Thunderbird Woman, 1973, serigraph on paper. Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery.
During 2016, I participated in Wood Land School Residency at Plug in ICA, facilitated by Jaimie Issac and Duane Linklater. The theme, Daphne Odjig's Thunderbird Woman, was influential to this work. When I look at Daphne Odjig’s Thunderbird Woman, I see her shifting between two bodies; two worlds; two perspectives, while at the same time Thunderbird Woman is cohesive and strong. I am prompted to ask: how do Indigenous and settler paths intertwine and crossover when there are different value systems, politics and relationships with the land?