Tanya Lukin Linklater, Artist

Larger Than Memory: Contemporary Art From Indigenous North America presents works by contemporary artists working across the United States and Canada in a variety of mediums and modalities. The exhibition centers around works produced in the 21st century, highlighting the significant contribution Indigenous artists have made and continue to make to broader culture from 2000 to 2020. Indigenous artists from North America present work that addresses critical dialogues taking place globally, engaging with challenging mediums and modes of production, expressing a continuum of their respective cultural heritages while also entering into conversation with and interpreting the canon of art history.

Artists in this exhibition include:

NEAL INUKSOIS AMBROSE-SMITH | NANOBAH BECKER | NANIBAH CHACON | LEWIS DESOTO | JEFFREY GIBSON | ELISA HARKINS | BRIAN JUNGEN | BRAD KAHLHAMER | IAN KUALI’I | CANNUPA HANSKA LUGER | TANYA LUKIN LINKLATER | MERYL MCMASTER | KENT MONKMAN | LAURA ORTMAN | MIKE PATTEN | ERIC-PAUL RIEGE | CARA ROMERO | KALI SPITZER | C. MAXX STEVENS | JOCK SOTO | JAUNE QUICK-TO-SEE-SMITH | MARIE WATT | KATHY ELKWOMAN WHITMAN | STEVEN YAZZIE

For more information please see

https://heard.org/larger-than-memory/

The Symposium : Discourse in Motion 

November 29 and 30, 2019

Arprim & Artexte, Montreal

With Sylvette Babin, Sarah Chouinard-Poirier, Paul Couillard, Carola Dertnig, Anique Jordan, Adam Kinner, Yen-Chao Lin, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Danielle St-Amour.

Discourse in Motion is the final event of the An Annotated Bibliography in Real Time and the beginning of a series of public projects in conjunction with the research project Keeping it Live / L’archive vivante : Performances, Archives and Exhibitions.  

Discourse in Motion sets out to investigate and bring to light performances’ many histories and  formats of representation that meet and are built within the discursive field of theories, notes, stories, and actions. Presented as a moment of shared reflection this event discusses performance’s various modes of iteration and archival existence(s) as a critical and a discursive practice – before, during and after the act. Together we are looking at how performance within the framework of the archive as a curatorial format not only inspires, reflects and documents but also shapes and, most importantly, changes how we experience and think about liveness as part of arts many forms of appearances. 

Organized as a series of artist presentations (Moving Histories and Discourse), a workshop (The Spaces of the Book), and a conversation (Writing and Performing) this symposium discusses the theoretical and practice-based relationships performers and writers act out and hold fast in relation to the embodiment of language through text as much as voice and gesture. We are especially interested in the slippage between lines and pages and will look at how the act of writing, various forms of publishing and the performance of their research, defines their practices. The objective of both An Annotated Bibliography in Real Time and the research project Keeping it Live: Performances, Archives and Exhibitions is to offer a hybrid and discursive perspective on the historization and institutionalization of performance art investigating performance’s many circumstances and modes of production, experience, and reception over time.

Organized by Emmanuelle Choquette, Barbara Clausen et Joana Joachim.

You can view docuemntation of my poetry reading, screening and conversation wtih Robin Simposon at:

https://artexte.ca/en/2019/11/video-symposium-writing-and-performing/

Catriona Jeffries has announced their representation of my work.

You can see a history of my work on the website. 

https://catrionajeffries.com/artists/tanya-lukin-linklater/works

Remai Modern asked me a few questions about this time for Field. There are several other artists who have contributed as well. 

https://remaimodern.org/field/read/tanya-lukin-linklater-questionnaire

The BMW Tate Live Exhibition 2020, Our Bodies, Our Archives, was cancelled due to the disruption caused by the corona virus.

However, Faustin Linyekula and "those of his collaborators who had already made it to London worked with Tate to stage a one-off, site-specific work. This was performed to camera in the empty Tanks after only a few hours of rehearsals." This documentation is available alongside a booklet that was produced in relation to the exhibition and performances, including conversation with Faustin Linyekula, Okwui Okpawasili and Tanya Lukin Linklater. You can access both here:

https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/bmw-tate-live-exhibition-2020

From the Tate Modern's website:

https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/bmw-tate-live-exhibition-2020/women-iskwewak

Drawing from her own autobiography as it meets the politics of Indigenous water-protection and the history of Treaty, Lukin Linklater builds a sculptural structure from floral kohkum scarves to be experienced in relation to movement and text that she will stage as performance within the space.

Making work alongside dancers and composers, Lukin Linklater bases her performances around scores, including poems. These expansive poems evoke her memories of childhood, places, and relationships.

Lukin Linklater draws from interactions with her extended family, Indigenous knowledge, and Alutiiq and Cree embodied experiences on the land to generate her performative practice. Her work often centres on the history of Indigenous peoples’ insistence, continuing this trajectory by communicating and sustaining culture which has been interrupted by colonial violence. 

Biography

Born 1976, Tanya Lukin Linklater is from the Native Villages of Afognak and Port Lions in southern Alaska, USA, and has lived and worked in northern Ontario, Canada for over a decade. In 2018, Lukin Linklater became the recipient of the inaugural Wanda Koop Research Fund. She is a doctoral candidate in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University.

From the Tate Modern's release in January, 2020 

BWM Tate Live Exhibition 2020

20-29 March

Faustin Linyekula, Okwui Okpokwasili and Tanya Lukin Linklater take over the Tanks at Tate Modern

Three artists take over Tate Modern’s Tanks for ten days and six nights, for the fourth annual BMW Tate Live Exhibition. 

Centring on his experiences of socio-political tensions in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the work of Faustin Linyekula (b. 1974) blends theatre, dance and music to build circles of connection between him, his collaborators and the audience.

Taking place during gallery hours, Okwui Okpokwasili (b.1972) explores the structures of memory in her installation-based durational practice, engaging with the history of protest by Nigerian women. 

Tanya Lukin Linklater's (b.1976) dance and installation-based work is informed by relationships within her Alutiiq and Cree family, conveyed through poetry and in material forms which become the foundation of her performance.

Each artist is concerned by how history is held in the body, and raise questions about shared memory, visibility and the porous boundaries of the ‘work of art’.

Performances and installations can be explored for free during the day. Additional ticketed performances will take place at night.

https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/bmw-tate-live-exhibition-2020

Adam Kleinman's review of Soft Power at SFMOMA, Do Artists Have ‘Soft Power’ To Create Political Change?, was published in Frieze on November 28, 2019. You can view the article here:

https://frieze.com/article/do-artists-have-soft-power-create-political-change

Adam Kleinman's description of my work:

"The theme of return is also present in Tanya Lukin Linklater’s Flat vessels made by the hands of our grandmothers that we discern and decipher as potential messages of repair (2019), an unveiling of Alutiiq sewing pouches on loan from the storage vaults of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology. Alongside the bags, which have been placed in a low vitrine framed by a living room couch, screens a silent video, The treaty is in the body (2017), in which Omaskêko Cree knowledge keeper Jennifer Wabano leads a discussion with several women and girls on the history of deals between Indigenous peoples and North American governments – or so the wall text tells us, as we are denied access to their words, and must instead focus on their gestures. This intimate mediation on heritage and the uses of memory as a form of resistance is possibly the most stirring work in the show."

Karen Rosenberg's review of Soft Power at SFMOMA for the New York Times, 

‘Soft Power’: When Political Art Walks a Very Fine Line, was published on December 19, 2019. You can view the article here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/18/arts/design/soft-power-sfmoma.html

Karen Rosenberg's description of my work:

"Other examples abound of women’s groups as keepers of tradition or vital information: soft power as female power, historically speaking. Tanya Lukin Linklater’s video “The treaty is in the body,” invites viewers into a gathering of women from the Omaskêko Cree nation as they explore the treaty relationships that are fundamental to their culture. The work is silent, but its many intimate gestures — one woman braids another’s hair — resound with shared understanding."