future generations is an exhibition that considers the role of Indigenous futurity as a tool of survival and survivance. The work is rooted in artist Tsēmā Igharas’ understanding and embodiment of Tāłtān culture and tradition, alongside objects and materials firmly rooted in Western settler culture. Using Potlatch methodology - a ceremony of reciprocation and nation building, in which every performance of artmaking is a “ceremony that affirms and solidifies relationships to every thing and body” – Igharas challenges the colonial value systems and measurements of land and natural resources, and the impact these systems have on the cultural practices of Indigenous peoples and nations. future generations presents strategies and gestures of resistance to forms of neo-colonization – what the viewer may come to understand as acts of decolonization - and imagines possible future(s) for Indigenous peoples to exist within. Through the work in future generations Igharas encourages methods of care – for the land, and our bodies – that become modes of resistance for past/present/future generations.
Artspace Peterbourogh, Peterbourogh ON, Canada
2018
Photos by Mathew Hays
Curated by Jonathan Lockyer