Hero image: Quinn Hopkins, Star Miigizi, 2022. Courtesy of the artist
Mmaandaawaabi (see a wondrous sight), August 20th to November 12, 2023
Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, ON
Digital and land-based work seem to inhabit separate domains, yet they are combined in Augmented Reality (AR), a form of mixed reality that overlays digital objects on physical space through the window of a phone or tablet. This presents exciting possibilities for Indigenous artists interested in decolonizing territories through immersive stories, and who wish to mobilize interactive and engaging land-based learning and language revitalization in their artwork. Mmaandaawaabi (see a wondrous sight) features the work of Preston Buffalo, Dallas Flett-Wapash, Quinn Hopkins and Casey Koyczan, four Indigenous artists whose digital practice reflects upon and engages with Indigenous worldviews and epistemologies through new media and AR technology. Through their work, and your phone, the artists invite you into their sculpturally immersive worlds to view and engage with artworks reflecting an Indigenous perspective on land, language, cosmology and contemporary realities.
This exhibition kicks off a week-long experimental Indigenous AR gathering. Structured by principles of Anishinaabe pedagogy, the gathering centres on non-hierarchical interconnectivity and methods such as intergenerational mentorship, oral traditions, embodied knowing and land-based pedagogy. Upon completion of the gathering, works created by participating artists will be added to this exhibition.
Sponsors: SSHRC Connection Grant, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Peripheral Visions Co-Lab (York University and Queen’s University), the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) and the Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Indigenization (EDII) at Queen’s University.
Peripheral Visions Co-Lab 