we exist, therefor, we exist installed for Born Celestial at Hamilton Artist Inc. curated by Alex Jacobs Blum. 2022
Exhibition text:
"The deep impact of colonial harms on Indigenous communities necessitates the emergence of new potentialities.
By using storytelling to collapse the future into the present, Born Celestial imagines unearthed futures beyond settler colonialism where Indigenous knowledge systems thrive. Born Celestial embodies futurities, drawing from human and other-than-human relations, community and familial knowledge, star systems, and Creation stories. Empowering a (re)connection to self and an uplifting of community, Born Celestial inspires healing and hopeful pathways for the seven generations to come.
Artists Danielle Boissoneau, Kaya Joan, Natalie King, Nicole Neidhardt, Celeste Pedri-Spade, and Chyler Sewell access love, memory and knowledge from ancestor relatives unbound by material form and linear notions of space and time. Navigating between worlds and constellations, the artists activate the dreams of ancestors, contemporary kin, and future relatives in a present temporality."
This project was made possible through the generous support of the Ontario Arts Council's Career Catalyst: Project Grants for New Generation Artists, which helped pay for studio space to work from.