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Notes from an exhibit in Venice in 2019.
The wallpaper room created by Nadia Myre to welcome visitors consists of three walls and a heart-shaped sculpture woven over with beads. Guided by a soundscape evoking a mythical origin story of the universe beginning with a single sound, the visitor enters a built environment that mixes European and Native elements around which mutually shared stories were variably passed on by American peoples and Europeans each in their own way. Contextual elements such as ships, sections of maps, and other culturally relevant icons displayed on Myre’s design walls furnish the background for the centre piece of her installation: a human heart covered with Murano beads. Presented in much the same way as a man-made object in a Renaissance cabinet of curiosity this three-dimensional piece is emblematic of the relationship that Venice has indirectly had with indigenous North Americans over the centuries. Beads are here a marker or difference and identity simultaneously. Europeans conquered with Venice beads the hearts and imagination of Native peoples who eagerly welcomed this new trade good since the early contact phases. Historically appreciated for their brilliance and versatility, indigenous women created artworks of accomplished skill and beauty. Myre’s glass-covered heart continues in a long-standing artistic tradition that poignantly reminds us of the centrality of women in shaping history. If, as proven by commercial records and economic history, Venetians saw the North American bead trade as a lucrative enterprise, it is equally true that indigenous women’s desire for this merchandise was the incentive for Venetians to produce more, and as a consequence, make more profits. Equally treated as both a commodity and a colonial tool, beads have historically been the means by which European imperial powers established diplomacy and trade with Native North Americans. Used as the soft arm of colonisation, beads are therefore not just trade items, but agents of historical change in a cross-cultural conversation that Myre here invites us to peruse and ponder over.
Myre calls upon deep mythologies and re-examines European claims to a ‘discovery’ of the New World. For Myre, the exhibit brings to mind an ordinary sound--a sort of zero-vibration, an uncontained note or utterance--that recalls the many creation myths wherein the world was formed around an unending aural reverberation. Calling on this notion of an unfettered, ever-expanding energy as a point of origin, Nadia Myre’s works in this exhibition juxtapose Native creation stories with European contact history. These works investigate the role that European print media, especially maps, played in imposing a new, colonial origin story on North America’s Indigenous peoples; one that was rooted in a Eurocentric narrative of discovery and ignored existing modes of self-determination and historical record. Jumping off from her practice’s continual interrogation of transcultural mutation, these works focus on critically reversing the gaze of the othering eye through remixing and Indigenizing symbols of control and production of knowledge that formed a legacy of European nation states as the centre of the world.
Depicted in Myre’s damask-patterned wallpaper is a woman falling through a dark, vast expanse to begin human life on earth. To the Haudenosaunee, Sky Woman signifies a matrilineal line of descent which traces the people of Turtle Island to North America. Cradled, framed, or entrapped by images of European ships and mapping motifs, Sky Woman continues her fall to earth, enduring amidst the impending colonial origin narrative of discovery. Here, Myre translates a typical floral damask motif into colonial and indigenous signifiers, whose forms reflect, repeat and oscillate between evocations of growth, nature, violence and destruction, forming a doubled narrative of struggle, resilience, and layered points of origin. Based on the decorative double-sided textile from the Middle East, damask, as a popular luxury wall covering in Renaissance Italy, resonates with thematics of mirroring, cultural transmutation, and power. Through her incorporation of an ornamental circular motif used in Giacomo Gastaldi’s 1556 Map to delineate Hochelaga (Montreal), Myre uses the decorative and narrative nature of this wallpaper to abstract devices of circumscription and colonial naming of territory in a move to reject settler cartographic and claiming practices towards a consciousness of Indigenous knowledge of land and history. Aptly positioned as the nucleus of the installation is a terracotta sculpture of a human heart--standing in for the hungry heart of capitalism, greed, empires and colonies--covered in an Anishinaabe floral pattern made with Venetian trade beads. Used as ballast in slave/trade ships, beads were an important economic currency and exchanged for both goods and services as well as people. As a call to indigenization--a return to a focus on the environment and relational ways of knowing--the wounded heart, blanketed with beads, reminds us to centre with respect and love on all our relations. As a haunting story of the start of the world from a zero-point that precedes humanity, life, and form alike, the soundscape in Myre’s installation is a representation of the mythic original sonic vibration--rethinking the ways beginnings are identified, inscribed, written, and read. Points of origin are chosen; they do not indicate an end to nothingness, but only an inability to read what previously existed. Engaging creation stories are powerful tools of self-determination, cultural definition, and expression of value.
Excerpt from artgalleryofburlington.com
Holding Space is an exhibition of over 1000 ceramic components exploring our multi-faceted relationship with space – both physically and philosophically. Hung from the ceiling, suspended on the wall and standing tall – raw, abstracted forms interact within the installation as an interface between our human and spatial experiences; the relationship between the lived and the abstract or conceptual. Holding Space uses multi-component sculptures to prompt visual explorations of Space as Emptiness; Space as a Conduit for communication; and Space as held Containment.
Excerpt from samanthadickie.com:
Holding Space
A solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of Burlington, Perry Gallery in Ontario, Canada, 2019/2020. The creation of this project was supported by a Visual Arts Grant from the BC Arts Council.
Space is where we live.
We cannot move without space. We cannot breathe without space.
We entangle ourselves with space and the space reshapes us.
Space is what we fill. Space is what we hold. Space is what we leave behind.
We are merged with the spaces around, between and inside of us.
My belief that our humanness is essentially rooted in relational dynamics provides the impetus behind using scale and multiples to create large-scale, multi-component groupings and immersive installations. As this attention to the relational is central to my work, dualities serve as a fulcrum for my practice and allow me to explore particular dyads such as subject/object, seen/unseen, individual/collective, viewer/viewed. Holding Space uses abstraction and expressionism to explore our multi-faceted relationship with space, both physically and philosophically.
This project considers notions of space with 3 assemblages (Written on the Body; Still Point; The Gesture of Grace):
THE GESTURE OF GRACE
Space as a Conduit. Each sculpture reflects a gesture, responsive to the next form, such as a dance troupe pushing and pulling on the space between each other, as they express the dynamic relationship between movement and space. 11 hand-built, 3’ tall, abstracted figures, standing in a line.
Notes from an exhibit in Venice in 2019.
The wallpaper room created by Nadia Myre to welcome visitors consists of three walls and a heart-shaped sculpture woven over with beads. Guided by a soundscape evoking a mythical origin story of the universe beginning with a single sound, the visitor enters a built environment that mixes European and Native elements around which mutually shared stories were variably passed on by American peoples and Europeans each in their own way. Contextual elements such as ships, sections of maps, and other culturally relevant icons displayed on Myre’s design walls furnish the background for the centre piece of her installation: a human heart covered with Murano beads. Presented in much the same way as a man-made object in a Renaissance cabinet of curiosity this three-dimensional piece is emblematic of the relationship that Venice has indirectly had with indigenous North Americans over the centuries. Beads are here a marker or difference and identity simultaneously. Europeans conquered with Venice beads the hearts and imagination of Native peoples who eagerly welcomed this new trade good since the early contact phases. Historically appreciated for their brilliance and versatility, indigenous women created artworks of accomplished skill and beauty. Myre’s glass-covered heart continues in a long-standing artistic tradition that poignantly reminds us of the centrality of women in shaping history. If, as proven by commercial records and economic history, Venetians saw the North American bead trade as a lucrative enterprise, it is equally true that indigenous women’s desire for this merchandise was the incentive for Venetians to produce more, and as a consequence, make more profits. Equally treated as both a commodity and a colonial tool, beads have historically been the means by which European imperial powers established diplomacy and trade with Native North Americans. Used as the soft arm of colonisation, beads are therefore not just trade items, but agents of historical change in a cross-cultural conversation that Myre here invites us to peruse and ponder over.
Myre calls upon deep mythologies and re-examines European claims to a ‘discovery’ of the New World. For Myre, the exhibit brings to mind an ordinary sound--a sort of zero-vibration, an uncontained note or utterance--that recalls the many creation myths wherein the world was formed around an unending aural reverberation. Calling on this notion of an unfettered, ever-expanding energy as a point of origin, Nadia Myre’s works in this exhibition juxtapose Native creation stories with European contact history. These works investigate the role that European print media, especially maps, played in imposing a new, colonial origin story on North America’s Indigenous peoples; one that was rooted in a Eurocentric narrative of discovery and ignored existing modes of self-determination and historical record. Jumping off from her practice’s continual interrogation of transcultural mutation, these works focus on critically reversing the gaze of the othering eye through remixing and Indigenizing symbols of control and production of knowledge that formed a legacy of European nation states as the centre of the world.
Depicted in Myre’s damask-patterned wallpaper is a woman falling through a dark, vast expanse to begin human life on earth. To the Haudenosaunee, Sky Woman signifies a matrilineal line of descent which traces the people of Turtle Island to North America. Cradled, framed, or entrapped by images of European ships and mapping motifs, Sky Woman continues her fall to earth, enduring amidst the impending colonial origin narrative of discovery. Here, Myre translates a typical floral damask motif into colonial and indigenous signifiers, whose forms reflect, repeat and oscillate between evocations of growth, nature, violence and destruction, forming a doubled narrative of struggle, resilience, and layered points of origin. Based on the decorative double-sided textile from the Middle East, damask, as a popular luxury wall covering in Renaissance Italy, resonates with thematics of mirroring, cultural transmutation, and power. Through her incorporation of an ornamental circular motif used in Giacomo Gastaldi’s 1556 Map to delineate Hochelaga (Montreal), Myre uses the decorative and narrative nature of this wallpaper to abstract devices of circumscription and colonial naming of territory in a move to reject settler cartographic and claiming practices towards a consciousness of Indigenous knowledge of land and history. Aptly positioned as the nucleus of the installation is a terracotta sculpture of a human heart--standing in for the hungry heart of capitalism, greed, empires and colonies--covered in an Anishinaabe floral pattern made with Venetian trade beads. Used as ballast in slave/trade ships, beads were an important economic currency and exchanged for both goods and services as well as people. As a call to indigenization--a return to a focus on the environment and relational ways of knowing--the wounded heart, blanketed with beads, reminds us to centre with respect and love on all our relations. As a haunting story of the start of the world from a zero-point that precedes humanity, life, and form alike, the soundscape in Myre’s installation is a representation of the mythic original sonic vibration--rethinking the ways beginnings are identified, inscribed, written, and read. Points of origin are chosen; they do not indicate an end to nothingness, but only an inability to read what previously existed. Engaging creation stories are powerful tools of self-determination, cultural definition, and expression of value.
in the middle of a blessed circle,
abiding memories for the whole life
incidental moments each day
centered together, being true in love
enlarged their perspective.
nearness to each other established
a rhythm of tiny transference
as they received from each other.
the look in such a transference
always thorough. this
created a positioning
to better understand the truth
seeing reality at its deepest levels
a way to shrink the ego
meaning-making, always relational.
garden in my mind. cultivated.
and if the door opens into halves
if one hates and other loves; still
they will be torn into two;
each a load - poles of feelings.
confusing feelings, the absence creates.
problems as platforms for learning
as simple as the right metaphor
shifting the understanding thorough
what illuminates and transforms,
cohere into undimmed affection
and rest stops; stops mattering.
never an insensitive moment -
- this tenderness to be ― one
never separated to elsewhere.
comforting and down to earth
their music was made; presence
even when no was looking
listening to sacred heart
ready to kindle an inner de.light.
owning joy and grief together
resonated well with the core
grateful in the bond of everyday
quietly moving e.motion
to take notice, to wonder
garden in my mind. balanced.
stranger moments, 'if' in everyday
and one can be lost in a maze
'first love' moment in the everyday
the stranger you fall in love
brings a measure of comfort.
unmistakable hands out of maze.
carried the magic within
the garden grows - never ending ---
-- music they'll never tire of
never a timid motion of the heart
unmistakable when seen in action
breathing life into inanimate things.
inner warmth, a newfound gratitude
great rhythm of resources in touch.
inner compass pointing to journey
in-depth of discovery and belonging.
to feel in a comprehensive way.
garden in my mind. centered.
beyond the horizon of the place.
wide perspective as a whole
all welcomed into their sacred circle.
knowing their world - 'why we are here'
garden in my mind. rounded off.
face to face - only one,
together they formed a Heart
Heart of Hearts
― Eterna-Oski
❈
One World
“The worlds in which we live are two
The world ‘I am’ and the world ‘I do.'”
The worlds in which we live at heart are one,
The world “I am,” the fruit of “I have done”;
And underneath these worlds of flower and fruit,
The world “I love,”–the only living root.
― Henry Van Dyke
✵*
Like Two Negative Numbers Multiplied by Rain
Lie down, you are horizontal.
Stand up, you are not.
I wanted my fate to be human.
Like a perfume
that does not choose the direction it travels,
that cannot be straight or crooked, kept out or kept.
Yes, No, Or
—a day, a life, slips through them,
taking off the third skin,
taking off the fourth.
And the logic of shoes becomes at last simple,
an animal question, scuffing.
Old shoes, old roads—
the questions keep being new ones.
Like two negative numbers multiplied by rain
into oranges and olives.
༺♥༻ Jane Hirshfield
Healthy wolves and healthy women share certain psychic characteristics: keen sensing, playful spirit, and a heightened capacity for devotion. Wolves and women are relational by nature, inquiring, possessed of great endurance and strength. They are deeply intuitive, intensely concerned with their young, their mates and their pack. They are experienced in adapting to constantly changing circumstances; they are fiercely stalwart and very brave.
Both have been hounded and harassed, and falsely imputed to be devouring and devious, overly aggressive, of less value than those who are their detractors. They have been the targets of those who would clean up the wilds as well as the wildish environs of the psyche, extincting the instinctual, and leaving no trace of it behind. The predation of wolves and women by those who misunderstand them is strikingly similar. -Clarissa Pinkola Estes
An electron can move from one spot to another without going through any of the space in between. Particles, like electrons, can have different properties depending on their environment: in some places they are particles, while in other places they are waves. Finally, two particles can have “non-local relationships,” which means they can be separated by vast distances but react as if they are connected to each other.
-The Not-Yet God Carl Jung, Teilhard de Chardin,
and the Relational Whole Ilia Delio, OSF
Another image Bohm used to explain his theory used pierced folded paper. If we take a piece of paper, fold it into a triangle, and pierce it to create a hole, when we unfold the sheet we see a pattern of holes that appear to be separate and unrelated. However, if we fold up the paper again, all the holes come together into the single spot through which it was pierced.
-The Not-Yet God Carl Jung, Teilhard de Chardin,
and the Relational Whole Ilia Delio, OSF