#windowwinnipeg

WINNIPEG’S ONLY 24 HOUR ARTIST-RUN CENTRE PRESENTS SOMNATH BHATT Location: Artspace Building, corner of Bannatyne @ Arthur [sidewalk level] window is pleased to present our thirty-seventh installation, Undo (2018), by Somnath Bhatt, on view until May 10, 2018. ~~ A one-word manifesto. A verb, 'undo' is both describing an action, state, or occurrence, and also redeeming it - a constant negotiation. ~~

WINNIPEG’S ONLY 24 HOUR ARTIST-RUN CENTRE PRESENTS Oluuji

Location: Artspace Building, corner of Bannatyne @ Arthur [sidewalk level]

window is pleased to present our fifty-sixth installation:

Of One’s Own Accord

acrylic on canvas

By Oluuji, curated by Sappfyre McLeod

Of One’s Own Accord is an installation in an ongoing series of paintings revolving around anxieties concerning growth. In this diptych, the subject is sat alone in space(s) separated by the panels, space(s) neither here nor there, with no apparent end in sight, both behind and in front of the subject. The piece seeks to use vast space(s) as a natural element in reverence to the significance and magnificence of space as a fundamental component of universal existence. In the space(s), the subject sits while he stares contemplatively at his reflection in a mirror, as he puts scissors through his hair. Hair represents a significant part of identity as it shapes or reflects aspects of one’s identity, and this is particularly true for people who identify as black. The piece intends to maintain a unifying theme of ambiguity, provoking the viewer to infer a plurality of narratives concerning the scene. Does he cut his hair after or does he not? Why? Is he sitting outside in a lush green field or is he in a hallway? This aims to accentuate the apparent gravity of decisions, ones that initially seem mundane but eventually mean a lot, ones that initially seem particularly impactful but end up somewhat irrelevant, or ones that we are yet to find out just how far their reach goes. These moments of making decisions appear to progressively become more noticeable as we grow into our own selves, start to develop a firm sense of personal identity and seek to carve out our own stories in the short time we’ve been gifted to experience conscious living.

About the artist:

Aderemilekun Olusoga, also known as 'Oluuji', is a sentient variable of infinite forms experiencing nowness as a moment between both ends of infinity.

He is a self-taught Nigerian visual artist currently living in Canada, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in Neuroscience in 2022. His innate skill and affinity for philosophy, religion and science cultivate a wide array of complex thoughts he communicates most effectively through his art. Through painting and film, his work explores the ubiquitous nature of binaries, cycles and conventionality in anthropic structures. Examining the dissonance between nostalgia and growth, personal or societal, worldly or spiritual, in a surrealist bid to provoke profundity towards the outwardly mundane.

window

window is located on Treaty 1 Territory, the original lands of Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene peoples and the Homeland of the Métis Nation. window is co-curated by Noor Bhangu, Mariana Muñoz Gomez, and Jennifer Smith.

This installation was made possible with the generous support of the Winnipeg Arts Council.

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WINNIPEG’S ONLY 24 HOUR ARTIST-RUN CENTRE PRESENTS MERRITT JOHNSON

Location: Artspace Building, corner of Bannatyne @ Arthur [sidewalk level]

window is pleased to present our fiftieth installation: Fancy Shawl for the frontlines, 2020 by Merritt Johnson on view until December 6, 2020. PROGRAMMING: Activation by Jaime Black: photo series and text to come Conversation between Merritt Johnson & Jaime Black: https://vimeo.com/468171644

Fancy Shawl for the frontlines is made for standing up to the elements, settler state and corporate violence, and systematic institutional and environmental racism. The shawl honors Indigenous protectors of Land and Water throughout Turtle Island. Made from an inexpensive waterproof tarp, commonly used to shelter people and belongings from weather, and to construct shelters, tents or tarpees, the material references access and necessity, resilience and persistence under oppressive or dire circumstances. The shawl is adorned with matching blue fringe and ribbon, to recognize the importance of celebrating and protecting Indigenous women as instrumental protectors of land, water, culture, and future generations. Indigenous women are on the frontlines, experiencing the violence, oppression and racism of corporate settler states, and on the frontlines organizing to stop violence against the lands and waters for present and future generations. Merritt Johnson was born in West Baltimore and spent her childhood navigating between trees, tarps and concrete. She earned her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and her MFA from Massachusetts College of Art. For decades her work has navigated the spaces between bodies and the body politic, land and cultures. The multiplicity of materials and processes Johnson employs reflect her multiplicity. Her work is layered, insisting on allegiance and agency to land, water, culture, and bodies subjected to violence and control by anthropocentric, cis-hetero patriarchy and white supremacy.   Johnson’s works are containers for story, feeling and thought: images of what cannot be seen, exercises for existence, and containers for ideas. Her work casts light and shadow on how and who we are, and envisions possibility. Johnson’s work is in numerous private collections as well as the public collections of the Birmingham Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, she lives and works with her family in Sitka Alaska.

WINDOW 47: MELANNIE MONOCEROS (JANUARY 9 - FEBRUARY 8, 2020)

“As an individual,  I've been using image descriptions on instagram and online for a number of years, and have been curious to find ways of providing the same access to "live" or in person image sharing. For me, it is another opportunity to invite a connection with the art and it is part of my practice of intersecting my beliefs in liberation, disability justice and interdependence with my artwork.”

WINNIPEG’S ONLY 24 HOUR ARTIST-RUN CENTRE PRESENTS MELANNIE MONOCEROS

Location: Artspace Building, corner of Bannatyne @ Arthur [sidewalk level]

window is pleased to present our forty-seventh installation:

a n c e s t o r a d I o

Featuring work by melannie monoceros and curated by Adele Ruhdorfer, on view until February 8, 2020.

~~

'a n c e s t o r a d i o' - is a 3 part series of short films using both analog and digital techniques, the seed of which iwas the discovery of a cassette featuring my mother and myself as a baby. It was recorded shortly before she died less than 2 years later. The first, "tuning the ocean", is an experimental animation on 16mm, navigating notions of water as a channel for cross/dimensional communication; the second "artifracture", is a narrative about trauma and place, focusing on a found kitchen object; the third, titled "remapping rosepathways" and still in development, explores weaving, process, and using the body as a tool for healing.

Overall the series is about grief and ancestorship, ghosts, and trying to listen for a sound (my mother's voice) that I didn't have a living memory of hearing until I first heard the tape.

-melannie monoceros

This installation is presented in conjunction with Gallery 1C03’s exhibition Yearning for Comfort, Not Cure, curated by Adele Ruhdorfer. Yearning for Comfort, Not Cure features work by six artists who explore their varied embodied experiences with disability, chronic illness, and madness, which are materialized and given form through the labour-intensive processes of performance, craft-based, and digital media. In addition to exploring the theme of complex embodiment, the artists deal more specifically with dis/comfort, chronicity and temporality, collage and fragmentation, familial histories, interdependence, sensory variance, and the compounding social effects that race and gender have on their bodies. Artists include Yvette Cenerini, Lux Habrich, Bram Keast, melannie monoceros, Laurence Philomène, and Jesse Turner. Yearning for Comfort, Not Cure is on view at Gallery 1C03 January 9 – February 8, 2020.

- Adele Ruhdorfer

~~

About the artist:

melannie monoceros is a poet and artist exploring polysensory production through text/ile, performance, and installation. A Black and chronically ill creator, they are currently based in Treaty 1 /Winnipeg, MB; home of the Métis First Nation and the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe, Dene, Cree, Dakota and Oji-Cree Nations. They have read and performed at Drop the Mic (Winnipeg, MB 2019), This is Not a Sentence (Paoli, IN 2018), Republic of Inclusion (Ottawa, ON 2017), and at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre (Toronto, ON 2016). monoceros is a VONA fellow (Berkeley, CA 2014) and has since been awarded grants from the Canada, Ontario, and Toronto Arts Councils. melannie has been a guest lecturer at Concordia University, Ontario College of Art and Design, Ryerson University, and Yukon College School of Visual Art.  melannie’s writing has appeared in magazines such as THIS, Make/Shift, Shameless, and The Peak as well as the When Language Runs Dry zine. Most recently, melannie ‘s work has appeared at the Dunlop Art Gallery (Regina, SK) and MAWA/Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art (Winnipeg, MB). In 2019, melannie was awarded the JRG Emerging Artist Award for their continued pursuit, integrating technology and accessibility through film installation via their series “a n c e s t o r a d i o”.

About the curator:

Adele Ruhdorfer is currently in her final year of a Bachelor of Arts Honours degree in Art History at The University of Winnipeg, where she’s focusing her research interests on applying critical feminist and disability frameworks to analyses of fine art and popular forms of visual culture. She is particularly interested in re-centring the politically-engaged embodied experiences of women, feminist, queer, and disabled artists, as they continue to be under-researched or, particularly in the case of chronic illnesses or disabilities, their positive connection to an artist’s creative process is overlooked. After graduating, she plans on pursuing a master’s degree in Cultural Studies, with the hopes of contributing to historical research, teaching, and curatorial practices.

window is located on Treaty 1 Territory, the original lands of Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene peoples and the homeland of the Metis Nation. Window is co-curated by Noor Bhangu, Mariana Muñoz Gomez, and Sarah Nesbitt.

WINNIPEG’S ONLY 24 HOUR ARTIST-RUN CENTRE PRESENTS NICO WILLIAMS

Location: Artspace Building, corner of Bannatyne @ Arthur [sidewalk level]

window is pleased to present our forty-sixth installation:

North of 56

Featuring Ripples by Nico Williams and curated by Lesley Beardy,

on view until January 7, 2020.

Tansi, Boozhoo, Aniin, Hello to all,

I would first like to acknowledge the land and waters in which we are situated today on Treaty One Territory, which is the traditional territory of Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene Peoples, and the homeland of the Métis Nation. In the Neheyew language of my ancestors, Winnipeg means “muddy waters.” And so, this site and in the space of Window Winnipeg is an important opportunity to give visual sovereignty to this issue of clean drinking water in our communities.

I recently visited three communities north of the 56th parallel: Lynn Lake, Leaf Rapids, and South Indian Lake. When I reached Lynn Lake, I was appalled to find out that the water was brown and not drinkable. And in South Indian Lake, one elder shared, “All of my childhood memories are under water, due to the impacts of MB hydro flooding our territory.” Two of these three communities are under a long-term provincial water advisory. It is 2019 and today we have 42 municipalities in Manitoba that are under a water advisory. To the rest of the world Canada looks like a leader, however Indigenous people in Canada experience living in third world conditions everyday. It has been this way for many of us since the beginning of colonization. I think it is time that Canada takes a deeper look inwards and repair this important issue.

To all the people in Canada living without clean drinking water, I admire your courage to endure this problem, everyday. And to Lynn Lake, Leaf Rapids, and South Indian Lake, for sharing your knowledge and resistance. To Shoal Lake 40, who has been supplying drinking water to Winnipeg since 1919 while having none for themselves, I have no words.

To turn to the artwork of Nico Williams, who has created this piece from a similar experience to my own. Ripples sheds light on not only the issue of clean drinking water and the sociopolitical issue of climate change. The circular form of this creative piece is woven together with delica beads representing mother earth and blue beads signify the sacred waters - as human beings we all laid in the medicinal waters of our mothers’ wombs. The black beads represent the venomous toxins that we have placed on mother earth. The other beads are a mixture of other blues and green, representing the land and other bodies of water.  Finally, the orange signifies the eighth fire that burns deep within this generation of Indigenous people: we have always been stewards of the land and have respected all animate and inanimate objects on this earth. This artwork symbolizes the collective hope for all life on mother earth. With Nico Williams, we use art as a tool to bring awareness to the crisis of drinking water, which is an everyday struggle for many people in this country and a site of learning.

Kiche Miigwetch to the curatorial team; Sarah N., Mariana, and the lovely Noor! The Anishinaabe artist, Nico Williams. The sponsors Manitoba Arts Council and Winnipeg Arts Council. Thank you once again for giving space to such an important issue for all our relatives.

-Lesley Beardy

~~

About the artist:Nico Williams is Ojibwe from Aamjiwnaang First Nation. He has participated in solo and group exhibitions across Canada and internationally. He’s an active member in the urban Indigenous Montreal Arts community and is a board member for the Biennale d'Art Contemporain Autochtone (Contemporary Native Art Biennial). In 2018, he was a part of a feature article and film spot in National Geographic. In January 2019, he became a core member in the Contemporary Geometric Beadwork team at a research and creation session “Art, Architecture, and Models of Hyperbolic Energy” at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United of America. Nico Williams recently was awarded the winner of the 2019 John Fluevog Shoes Emerging Artist Grant.

About the curator:Lesley Beardy is an indigenous Ikwe/iskew. She comes from the seventh generation of leaders from the Missipawistic Cree Nation. Lesley is the liaison for the Indigenous Way of Life with Frontier School division. Her passions include education, history, and Indigenous culture. She believes that art is a form of healing and can speak to all peoples with a glimpse of real perceptions of what life is like for Indigenous people in Canada. Lesley has also been a guest curator for Glam Collectives Memory Keepers Exhibition in Nuit Blanche at Montreal in March 2019.

window is located on Treaty 1 Territory, the original lands of Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene peoples and the homeland of the Metis Nation. Window is co-curated by Noor Bhangu, Mariana Muñoz Gomez, and Sarah Nesbitt.

WINNIPEG’S ONLY 24 HOUR ARTIST-RUN CENTRE PRESENTS LEE LAI

Location: Artspace Building, corner of Bannatyne @ Arthur [sidewalk level]

window is pleased to present our forty-fifth installation, This Far, 2018, by Lee Lai, on view until October 31, 2019.

This piece is more or less an expression of love to my mum, who's pushed herself for years to try and arrive at a place of understanding of how I'm moving through the world. In this story, the child is leaving home and transitioning into a tree– something intended to nod to both humour / parody, and spirituality. It's also an attempt to emotionally connect with the pure feelings of fear and strangeness felt by a parent who, new to these concepts and language, is watching her flesh and blood embark on a journey that is so far from what she thought was real or possible.

~~

About the artist:

Lee Lai is from Naarm (Melbourne), Australia, and currently makes comics and illustrations in Tio’tia:ke (known as Montreal, Quebec). Her work is part memoir, part fiction– stories about intimacy, families and food – and has been featured in The New Yorker, The Lifted Brow, Room Magazine, and Everyday Feminism.

window is located on Treaty 1 Territory, the original lands of Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene peoples and the homeland of the Metis Nation. Window is co-curated by Noor Bhangu, Mariana Muñoz Gomez, and Sarah Nesbitt.

CH: Can you speak to how the project got started and why you were interested in this work?

MC: The idea came when I was walking down Sargent with my mom and I saw these two dudes approach us and they didn’t move out of the way but we moved out of the way. I was like why did I move out of the way? They came towards us; we made eye contact. I just kept thinking, why do we keep doing that? It kept happening over and over again for a couple weeks and I thought about all the times that I move out of the way for people, especially men and white people.

I thought about the other ways people take up space, like within my job and school. I decided to talk to non-binary folks, queer folks, people of colour, QTBIPOC, people with disabilities, and women about the ways that they navigate that and occupy spaces. This project is about reclaiming that space.

CH: How does the interview aspect of this project inform the work?

MC: Certain stories really stuck out to me, but I’m also interested in hearing other people’s reactions. I hope other people are able to relate to them too. It has a domino effect and creates empowerment. If you want to take up more space, do it in your own time when you feel the most comfortable.

I was talking to Megan Linton and their experience with using a cane. I wouldn’t imagine that people would be so gross about it. Sometimes I don’t even realize how taking up space is so important for other people. She just wants to walk around and get from point A to point B. She doesn’t need people to stare at her and say “ooh, cane,” or “why do you have a cane?” She had to make a whole instagram post to explain, “don’t talk to me about my cane.” People shouldn’t have to do that. I shouldn’t have to say, “don’t stare at me because I’m black.” Things that aren’t necessary have to become necessary because people can be terrible.

CH: There are so many stories you’ve collected about people’s experience with public space—what was that like and will you be doing anything further with the interviews?

MC:  Femisphere [on CKUW 95.9fm] keeps giving me the platform to do stuff like this so that I can meet people and share their stories and have companionship with different people in the city who are doing all this amazing work. I underestimated Winnipeg when I was younger. The people you meet, maybe you don’t see them all the time, but acknowledging that they’re a good person, that I understand their stories, and that we have a common ground—it’s about friendship. It’s about people. Of course it sucks not to be around my family as much, but I think, mom, I love you—but I need to do this work, because I think it’s valuable and needed.

Playing the interviews on Femisphere will be great because it’s a community radio station. I love radio because you don’t know who is listening to it. My mom and grandma listen to it and they love it, but we need the mayor to listen to it, or someone who has never thought about taking up space or learned about feminism. Anyone can listen, just like the photos in window, anyone can see them.

CH: Can you say more about how the photographs’ physical presence at window lends to the work?

MC: I think it’s super cool that people are just passing by. There’s no label or name next to it so people can have their own imagination about what it might be about. People who are involved in the photos can also walk by and be like, “ooh it’s me up there,” which definitely has power too, to take up space in downtown Winnipeg in an area that is very businessy and expensive. I can post them online and people can share them, but to have physical space, people can try to understand what those photos represent and what the stories behind them are.

CH: Can you tell us about other upcoming projects or future goals? How can people keep up with your work?