Untitled (creation) (Detail)

Artist Statement:
Untitled(Creation), 2019 is a representation of my experience having learned Indigenous creation stories through institutional settings in lieu of traditional knowledge systems. Found images of water, fur, feathers, earth, and other key elements of the stories are assembled, layered and distilled to a single nonrepresentational form. Abstractions engender new ways of exploring without the distraction of distinct representational forms. The collective essence of these combined elements can thus be captured, then translated. Here, a digital photograph becomes a loom beadwork pattern where each bead embodies one pixel, and vice versa.

Traditional and contemporary mediums intersect to situate the work in conflicting spaces, somewhat similar to where I find myself. Loose threads left behind from the arm’s length used with every rethreading of the needle are reflections of my own body within the work. Undulating strands take the likeness of water for water is central to creation, birth, and all things. The beadwork is boxed and suspended in a white frame alluding to the colonial spaces where I learned Indigenous spirituality informed by “knowledge translation”. The work considers my positionality as a Metis person, defined by a disconnect from my ancestral cultures, where I exist in the in-between.