Core Residency
How are we connected? What are the ties that bind us? These are some of the questions that Cannupa Hanska Luger and Marie Watt have been talking through via their joint residency with Stelo. As we celebrate the culmination of their multi-year residency, you are invited to the exhibition Gather, on view at Stelo August 13 - November 27, 2022.
Visitors to the Stelo flex space will engage with pieces from Luger and Watt’s individual art practices, as well as their first collaborative art work, Each/Other. Watt and Luger merged their practices to create this sculpture with hundreds of people from around the world. The artists asked participants to embroider messages while considering “if acts of collaboration help heal broken bonds with the environment and with each other.”
During the exhibition, Stelo will host public programs relating to themes that have emerged throughout the residency. Save the date for the exhibition opening on Saturday August 13 where you can hear more from the artists who will be in attendance.
RESIDENCY UPDATES FROM 2021
We are excited to announce that Portland, OR based artist, Marie Watt has been awarded a c3:core residency in collaboration with Cannupa Hanska Luger. The Core Residency is a long-term, process-based, artist-driven program that supports residents in the creation of new work from conception to completion.
As an artist led program the core residency responds to timely and emergent needs. When core resident, Cannupa Hanska Luger began collaborating with Marie Watt to create a joint project to be exhibited at the Denver Art Museum in 2021, c3 staff agreed that supporting this work was a natural fit. The Denver Art Museum exhibition, EACH/OTHER marks the first time that these artists are collaborating with one another. As an organization that values partnerships, and seeks to give time and space for the development of new artistic works, c3:initiative is excited to continue supporting Cannupa and to begin introducing Marie Watt’s work to our community.
In winter 2021 Luger and Watt were in residence at our rural campus at Camp Colton for an in person stay with their families. They completed a collaborative piece that began forming in 2020, along with the participation of public participants (read more below). During their August 2020 residency they partnered with the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation to create a video call to action for their collaborative sculpture project. In 2021 c3:initiative will host an introductory exhibition of Marie Watt’s work. We look forward to sharing more info about public programs related to this collaborative residency throughout 2021.
RESIDENCY UPDATES FROM 2020
CONTRIBUTE TO A MONUMENTAL ARTWORK
Embroider a message onto a bandana, which the artists will incorporate into a large-scale sculpture for the Each/Other exhibition, which opens at the DAM in May 2021.
Embroidered bandanas were needed by December 1, 2020.
Instructions
Acquire a bandana or a piece of repurposed fabric roughly the size of a bandana
Fold bandana/fabric corner to corner to create a triangle
Embroider/stitch text, imagery or any other visual sentiment onto a corner portion of the fabric
Ship to the artists at this address:
Camp Colton
℅ Each/Other
30088 S Camp Colton Dr
Colton, OR 97017
PAST PUBLIC PROGRAMS
A Frayed Knot / AFRAID NOT
Cannupa Hanska Luger Introduction Exhibition + Performance
September 5—October 18, 2019
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 5, 5-8pm
Performance: Thursday, September 5, durational from 5-8pm
Gallery Hours: Wednesday–Saturday, noon–6pm and by appointment
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
A Frayed Knot
There is a line, that spans across time in a continuum. This line is the record of our existence and is woven into the very fabric of being. But this line, through tension or abrasion or brute force, has been cut. The edge of this line is broken and unravelling. In order to connect to our past we must take up that line in both hands and tie it to our present in order to guide us into the future. Our stories are a long worn line and the effort to maintain them has left an artifact of that care in the form of A Frayed Knot.
ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE
AFRAID NOT
Performative action by artist Cannupa Hanska Luger will tie a physical line from the tools of ar-ti-fa-ct to their task.
These are not ancient artifacts.
These are not culturally specific artifacts.
These will not be found in the historical record.
These do not shine light on a lost civilization.
These were not dug from pits by devoted scholars.
These were not stolen from burial grounds.
These were not gifts from a fascinated collector.
These are not donations from friends of the museum.
These are trapped tools for our current battle.
These are made of earth to slay our earth eating monsters.
These fit in our hands. These rest on our shoulders.
The instructions for use are embedded in our genetic memory.
These are needed now and so are we.
In this time we must remember our belonging to the earth.
We must re-establish reverence for our land, rather than resource.
We must recall the fact that we are this place.
We must fight. We must survive.
EVENTS TO CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
JACQUELINE KEELER: READING + PRESENTATION
Wednesday, October 2, 6-8pm
Join us for a presentation of a new essay by writer Jacqueline Keeler, created in response to Cannupa Hanska Luger's exhibition, A Frayed Knot / AFRAID NOT. This is a free, open to the public event.
ABOUT THE WRITER
Jacqueline Keeler is a Diné/Ihanktonwan Dakota writer. Her book “The Edge of Morning: Native Voices Speak for the Bears Ears” is available from Torrey House Press and the forthcoming “Standing Rock to the Bundy Standoff: Occupation, Native Sovereignty, and the Fight for Sacred Landscapes” will be released next year.
SOMETHING TO HOLD ONTO: INTERACTIVE PROGRAM
Saturday, October 12, 2-4pm
At this interactive event you are invited to make a handmade clay bead for Cannupa Hanska Luger's project, Something to Hold Onto. Leading the activity is Portland based artist, Maya Vivas.
ABOUT CANNUPA'S PROJECT
According to Border Patrol statistics, more than 7,209 human beings have died while crossing the southwestern border of the United States over the past 20 years. The International Organization for Migration has recorded the deaths of nearly 25,000 humans attempting to migrate across the globe’s imposed borders since 2014. Both numbers are vastly underestimated; both are unfathomable.
Something to Hold Onto considers ancestral migratory routes and the lands of Indigenous peoples affected by imposed borders, acknowledging all asylum seekers, tribal lands, longstanding relationships to land and migration as cultural practice. This intersectional project highlights the impact of borders on Indigenous bodies and how, across the continent, our migration routes have been traumatically interrupted through incarceration and death.
Something to Hold Onto will incorporate more than 7,209 handmade beads as a way to collectively re-humanize this large, abstract, and dehumanizing data. Cannupa invites communities to make and contribute clay beads, honoring lives lost along the now unsafe migration paths of Indigenous people.
This collective call to action is not designed to confront policy change, but creates an opportunity to embed handmade earthen objects with empathy -- from nation to nation, from human to human. These small clay objects embedded with a fist print, will string together a line of solidarity, building global consciousness around Indigenous peoples and our connection to movement and land. In opposition to the incarceration and militarization that separates geography, Something to Hold Onto pieces together people and places in a tapestry of borderless compassion.
All unfired beads made at the event will be mailed to Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum at Mesa Arts Center to be included in Cannupa's project.
ABOUT MAYA VIVAS
Maya Vivas is a ceramic sculptor and performance artist based in of Portland Oregon and co-founder of Ori Gallery. Whose mission is to redefine "the white cube" through amplifying the voices of Queer and Trans Artists of color, community organizing and mobilization through the arts.
PRESS
Performa Magazine Review, AFRAID NOT, September 12, 2019
This project is funded in part by the Regional Arts & Culture Council, and the performance is presented in partnership with PICA’s 2019 TBA Festival.