Hair Prints
Tanya Lukin Linklater
April 22 -July 29, 2023
Open Space
510 Fort Street, 2nd floor
Victoria
Opening: April 22
Open Rehearsals: April 26, 27 & 28, in gallery
with dance artist Ivanie Aubin-Malo
“In Spring 2022 I began a process of making dynamic mono-prints by coating my hair in natural pigments of blueberry, raspberry, strawberry, and blackberry and transferring them to archival paper. My hair fell, moved across, and was pressed into the paper following my body. Inspired in part by David Hammons’ Body Prints and Awilda Sterling-Duprey’s dance-drawings, these works register movement. In my thinking, Hair Prints cite nacaq, fully beaded Alutiiq/Sugpiaq women’s headdresses, and miksastotin, beaded Omaskeko or Eeyouch womens’ hoods. My relationship with these women’s garments include visits with them in museum collections, visits with knowledge holders and makers, and making performances and other works in relation to them. Berries, our plant relatives, are significant for my family, our extended relatives, and communities elsewhere on Turtle Island. Their interactions with hair continue to unfold forms and meaning” (Tanya Lukin Linklater, 2023).
Hair Prints is presented as part of the 2023 series Wayfinders, the ones we breathe with
Curated by Toby Lawrence
Throughout 2023, Open Space will present a series of exhibitions, residencies and events under the title Wayfinders, the ones we breathe with. Breathing together across the shared ocean in cultural, environmental and molecular exchange. Through the work of artists from coastal neighbours and nations across the Pacific Ocean, Wayfinders recalls ancient way finding practices utilizing the stars, wind, water and land markers to find paths across the sea and into the intertwined histories, practices, migrations and contemporary lives of adjacent homelands.
This elongated program simultaneously nurtures the relationships that led to the development of this series and leaves space for the project to organically and intuitively build outward with interdisciplinary programming and collaboration, looking locally to communities on Vancouver Island and across to coastal neighbours. This intentional move recognizes the depth and transfer of knowledge as activated through relationality—essential in breaking open western colonial strongholds within exhibition making, de-centering singular narratives within art and curation, and implementing responsibility beyond personal subjectivity and worldview. Such relationality further extends to the land, the cosmos and ideas, while underscoring accountability and the dynamism by which learning takes place (Shawn Wilson 2008). As the curatorial lead for Wayfinders, I am tracing transoceanic through lines and interwoven modes of practice by way of conversations, connections and deep listening. Residencies and artist projects with Josh Tengan, Camille Georgeson-Usher and Tanya Lukin Linklater anchor the series. Further details and additional contributors to be announced.