Join us for the opening reception of our newest exhibitions:
XENOGENESIS | THE OTOLITH GROUP
TSIMA KOHTOTSITAPIIHPA WHERE ARE YOU FROM? | LAUREN CRAZYBULL
INTO THE STREETS PUBLIC ART SERIES: GRANNY DORA | LAUREN CRAZYBULL
Saturday, September 26
Limited attendance, 30 guests per hour block, two sessions
Session I 8-8:45 PM *Please note this session is full
Session II 9-9:45 PM
Exhibition Tours will be hosted by Courtney Faulkner, Public Engagement & Event Coordinator [Adult], and Adam Whitford, Curatorial & Publications Coordinator, at the start of each viewing session | 8 PM and 9 PM
XENOGENESIS | THE OTOLITH GROUP
Xenogenesis is the first large scale exhibition of The Otolith Group presented in Canada, as part of an international exhibition tour organized by the Vanabbemuseum in Eindhoven, NL; the exhibition will include artworks produced between 2011 and 2018. The collective was founded by artist Anjalika Sagar and theorist Kodwo Eshun in 2002.
Xenogenesis is named after Octavia Butlers’ Xenogenesis Trilogy, which consists of Dawn. Xenogenesis: 1, Adulthood Rites. Xenogenesis: 2, and Imago. Xenogenesis: 3. As a pioneering African American female science fiction novelist, Butler’s award-winning novels investigated questions of human extinction, racial distinction, planetary transformation, enforced mutation, generative alienation and altered kinship. From her first novel Patternmaster, 1976, to her final novel Fledgling, 2005, Butler challenged the questions of science fiction in ways that transformed the cultural imagination of futurity for generations of feminist thinkers, artists and philosophers from Donna Haraway to Denise Ferreira da Silva to the Black Quantum Futurists. Butlers’ fictions of xenogenesis, which are narrated as processes of alien becoming or becoming alien, have informed and continue to inform the movement of thought of The Otolith Group’s work.
Curated by Annie Fletcher
The exhibition was first shown at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, NL; copyright of the concept of the exhibition is attributed to the VAM. Exhibition Architecture by Diogo Passarinho Studio.
The Otolith Group was founded in 2002 and consists of Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun who live and work in London. During their collaboration The Group have drawn from a wide range of resources and materials; their research-based work spans moving image, audio, performance, installation, and curation. The Otolith Group incorporates film making and post-lens-based essayistic aesthetics that explore the temporal anomalies, anthropic inversions, and synthetic alienation of the posthuman, the inhuman, the non-human, and the complexity of the environmental conditions of life we all face. In 2010 The Otolith Group were nominated for the Turner Prize.
TSIMA KOHTOTSITAPIIHPA WHERE ARE YOU FROM? | LAUREN CRAZYBULL
Lauren Crazybull, a Niitsitapi and Dené painter currently residing in Edmonton, returned to Kainai territory to research the land and language of their family as a part of their artistic research as 2019 Alberta Artist-in-Residence. In this region, Crazybull met with artists and elders, and connected with landmarks and historical sites of the Blackfoot Confederacy. Through this process, Crazybull has created their own map based on personal exploration of the lands across the province, and how these treks have informed their own practice in becoming an artist.
TSIMA KOHTOTSITAPIIHPA Where are you from? includes the hand-painted map of Indigenous territories now known as Treaty 6, 7, and 8 territories of Alberta, traversed by Lauren Crazybull. The photographic documentation of this journey culminated in a book created by the artist, and an audio soundscape by Crazybull, featuring a score by musician Matthew Cardinal.
TSIMA KOHTOTSITAPIIHPA Where are you from? was premiered at Latitude 53 Gallery in an exhibition curated by Noor Bhangu. The Southern Alberta Art Gallery iteration of the exhibition will include several new works created by the artist, reflecting on their connections to the Blackfoot territory. The closing celebration will include a screening of a short documentary IIKAAKIIMAAT, by filmmaker Conor McNally. This film screening is presented in partnership with the Reconciliation Lethbridge Committee and the City of Lethbridge.
When I think about repatriation, I think about going into a museum and taking back items. I learned from Martin HeavyHead Sr. that repatriation takes many forms, including learning stories, making relations and visiting the places where our ancestors spent time. We can take back these things that were once stolen from us. Sometime this year I decided that the money I received from the Alberta Government would be the money I used to reclaim what I lost during my sixteen years in the child welfare system. To do this I would create a large-scale map of Alberta that focused on Indigenous relationship to land. I would do this through looking for original place names, researching and traveling around Alberta. Halfway through the residency, when I realized that I'm not a cartographer, I decided I would narrow the scope and include myself and my family's relationship to the land in this province. I ended up spending most of my time in Southern Alberta where my mom's side of the family is from. “TSIMA KOHTOTSITAPIIHPA: Where are you from?” has been a way for me to explore the complexity of home and belonging.
—Lauren Crazybull
Curated by Adam Whitford, Curatorial and Publications Coordinator
SAAG Art Library Project | Beginning in 2020, the SAAG will present exhibitions as in-situ interventions within our art library. The Art Library Project will feature a diverse selection of artworks and mediums from regional contemporary artists. Artists are invited to think of the library as a unique exhibition context by investigating the SAAG’s programming around readership, publications, and its place within Lethbridge’s historic Carnegie library, which opened in 1922. Artists are encouraged to consider the physical architecture of the library and its material holdings, responding to a broader and generative idea of what a library might be, as they change and adapt to new forms of knowledge production.
Lauren Crazybull is an Edmonton based Blackfoot, Dene visual artist. Lauren’s most recent work has looked to explore the tension and power within portraiture by examining the subtle relationship between themself and the subjects they paint. By centring the gaze, beauty and rich humanity of fellow Indigenous people in their recent work, Crazybull means to ask poignant questions about how Indigenous identities can be represented, experienced, celebrated and understood through the particular gaze that artistry casts and requires. In 2019, Lauren Crazybull was appointed as Alberta’s first Artist in Residence. In 2018, they were awarded the McLuhan House year-long studio residency. Before fully immersing into the visual art world, Crazybull worked for four years in radio and broadcasting focusing on Indigenous issues. Following that, they worked for two years as the art coordinator at a centre for at-risk youth. Through this work, Crazybull understands that their creative power is a poignant way to assert their own humanity, and advocate, in diverse and subtle ways, for the innate intellectual, spiritual, creative and political fortitude of Indigenous people.
This exhibition will also feature an Into the Streets public artwork by Crazybull titled Granny Dora that will be presented on SAAG’s exterior east window.