Our Hands, Our Body, Our Spirit, 2022 (Video Still)

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Our Hands, Our Body, Our Spirit is made from the documentation of a performance I did in 2019 at Middle Cove, Newfoundland. Through the Eastern Edge land-based residency in 2019, I completed a performance at Middle Cove Beach in Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland) that critiqued western notions of 'land art.’ I spent three hours collecting rocks from a beach and carrying them up a bluff to position them in a circle the diameter of the length of my body. I then carried all the rocks back down to the beach, leaving an imprint of the rocks on the land. This form of labour was meant to activate an action of love and care, making something from the surrounding area and then putting each piece back with equal care. I have activated this footage by creating an overlaid hand-drawn animation of my hands beading. The concept is rooted in Indigenous making being inherently connected to land–the act of using our bodies in multitudes to survive and thrive. My labour contemplates the history of our artwork on this land and how we have always been the original conceptual and land artists of this land. In my land-based residency at Eastern Edge, I disrupted the traditional and familiar discourse of ‘Land art,’ as a movement from the 1960/70s which was dominated by western men, with the purpose of rejecting the commercialization of the art world. My view is that land art has always existed in Turtle Island and that it has been ignored by the domination of western ideologies of art making. Indigenous peoples and nations have been making land art since time-immemorial as a tactic for survival, which centres respect, and honouring Mother Earth. My Eastern Edge performance embodied that labour that has gone ignored, overlooked and undervalued. The emotional labour and craft-based labour of Indigenous beadwork artists and caregivers are similarly undervalued, and by bringing together these linked elements of land art and beadwork, I create systems of value according to Indigenous concepts of stewardship.

Artist: Carrie Allison
Videographer: Aaron Elliot
Editor: Carr Sappier
Sound Design: Jessie Beier
Technical Help: Anne McMillan
Management: IOTA Institute

Thank you to Canada Council for the Arts for financially funding this work and to Eastern Edge Gallery for giving me the space to dream up the beginnings.