Arctic/Amazon
Networks of Global Indigeneity
LEAD CURATOR: GERALD MCMASTER
CO-CURATOR: NINA VINCENT
INSTITUTIONAL CURATOR: NOOR ALÉ, ASSOCIATE CURATOR
Arctic/Amazon: Networks of Global Indigeneity explores the ways in which Indigenous contemporary artists and collaborators take on issues of climate change, globalized Indigeneity, and contact zones in and about the Arctic and the Amazon during a time of crisis. The featured artists have their origins or are connected to these places, and their works embody a politics of resistance, resurgence, and ways of knowing and being in relation to the lands that are the source of their knowledge and creativity.
Public Artist Talk: 🗓Thursday, Sep 15, 7 PM to 8:30 PM 📍100 McCaul St. Rm 544 👩🎨Artist: Olinda Reshijabe Silvano
Olinda Reshijabe Silvano’s vibrant mural features maze-like designs known as the ancestral Shibipo-Konibo art of kené. Across her work, Silvano references el Ronín, a divine anaconda who is the mother of the earth and water, and whose geometric patterns inspired kené art. Cosmovisions and creation stories are accompanied by icaros—healing and ritualistic songs—that materialize kené designs into creation. The abstracted linework represents the koshi force of plants—positive energy—that manifest as colourful lines perceptible to Shipibo-Konibo artists. Olinda Reshijabe Silvano (b. Paoyhan, Peru) is a Shipibo-Konibo artist whose woven embroidery textiles and public art feature bold geometric abstractions, known as kené designs. The kené is a network of meaning and complex relations guiding paths, healing, and creating connections between human and more-than-human beings in an animated environment. These maze-like patterns are sacred designs that emerge from singing and experiencing connections between worlds propitiated by shamanism that render the invisible perceptible. Silvano is a symbol of resistance in Cantagallo, Peru, where she relocated to continue the tradition of kené art along with the collective Las Madres Artesanas (the Artisan Mothers).