Curated by Candice Hopkins and Dylan Robinson, Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts features newly commissioned scores, performances, videos, sculptures and sound by Indigenous and other artists who respond to this question. Unfolding in a sequence of five parts, the scores take the form of beadwork, videos, objects, graphic notation, historical belongings, and written instructions. During the exhibition these scores are activated at specific moments by musicians, dancers, performers and members of the public, gradually filling the gallery and surrounding public spaces with sound and action.

The exhibition is cumulative, limning an ever-changing community of artworks, shared experience and engagement as it travels. Soundings shifts and evolves, gaining new artists and players in each location. Some artworks have multiple parts, others change to their own rhythm as the exhibition grows.

At the core of the exhibition is a grounding in concepts of Indigenous land and territory. To move beyond the mere acknowledgement of land and territory here means offering instructions for sensing and listening to Indigenous histories that trouble the colonial imaginary. Soundings activates and asserts Indigenous resurgence through the actions these artworks call forth.

Artists: Raven Chacon and Cristóbal Martínez, Sebastian De Line, Camille Georgeson-Usher, Maggie Groat, Kite, Germaine Koh, Aaron Leon, Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Logan MacDonald, Chandra Melting Tallow, Ogimaa Mikana, Peter Morin, Diamond Point and Jordan Point, Lisa C. Ravensbergen, Heidi Senungetuk, Greg Staats, Olivia Whetung, and Tania Willard, with more performers, artists and composers invited to respond and create new works as the exhibition travels to each new venue.

PERFORMANCES

Thursday, October 13
Surrounded/Surrounding, score by Tania Willard performed.

Wednesday, October 26
American Ledger (no. 1), score by Raven Chacon performed. Paul Rudy, Conductor.

Thursday, October 27
Public lecture by Raven Chacon at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art.

Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts is an exhibition curated by Candice Hopkins and Dylan Robinson, and organized by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University, Canada. The traveling exhibition is organized by Independent Curators International (ICI). The exhibition and tour are made possible, in part, with the generous support from ICI’s International Forum and the ICI Board of Trustees. Additional support has been provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts’ New Chapter Program, the Isabel and Alfred Bader Fund of Bader Philanthropies, the Ontario Arts Council, the City of Kingston Arts Fund through the Kingston Arts Council, and the George Taylor Richardson Memorial Fund at Queen’s University.

Additional support at KCAI comes from The Gattermeir Family Foundation, Travois, Sharon and John Hoffman and Linda Lighton. Other supporters through performance and academic partnerships include the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art at Johnson County Community College, the Tulsa Artist Fellowship and The Patricia and Howard Barr Institute for American Composition Studies at UMKC. A special thanks to Gaylene Crouser and the Kansas City Indian Center, Bruce Hartman, Bill Sundahl, Davin Watne, Paul Rudy, Dr. Robert Warrior, Dr. Alex Red Corn, Braxton Redeagle and the Osage Nation Language Department, and Sonié Joi Thompson-Ruffin.