Hair Prints
Tanya Lukin Linklater
April 22 -July 29, 2023
Season Opening Reception: Saturday, April 22, 3-7pm
Open Rehearsals: April 26, 27 & 28
As part of Tanya Lukin Linklater's exhibition Hair Prints, the public is invited to witness a series of Open Rehearsals with dance artist Ivanie Aubin-Malo, over three days. Each Open Rehearsal is a free, drop-in event. Please respect the artists' working process and rehearsal space with your quiet presence while in the gallery.
Wednesday April 26, 12-4pm
Thursday April 27, 12-4pm
Friday April 28, 12-4pm
ALLERGY WARNING The Hair Prints exhibition uses walnut oil.
“In Spring 2022 I began a process of making dynamic mono-prints by coating my hair in natural pigments of blueberry, raspberry, strawberry, and blackberry and transferring them to archival paper. My hair fell, moved across, and was pressed into the paper following my body. Inspired in part by David Hammons’ Body Prints and Awilda Sterling-Duprey’s dance-drawings, these works register movement. In my thinking, Hair Prints cite nacaq, fully beaded Alutiiq/Sugpiaq women’s headdresses, and miksastotin, beaded Omaskeko or Eeyouch womens’ hoods. My relationship with these women’s garments include visits with them in museum collections, visits with knowledge holders and makers, and making performances and other works in relation to them. Berries, our plant relatives, are significant for my family, our extended relatives, and communities elsewhere on Turtle Island. Their interactions with hair continue to unfold forms and meaning” (Tanya Lukin Linklater, 2023).
Tanya Lukin Linklater, Hair Print 1, Hair Print 6 & Hair Print 12, 2022, strawberry, blueberry, raspberry pigments transferred to paper with artist’s hair. Photo: Rachel Topham Photography, courtesy of the artist & Catriona Jeffries.
During her onsite residency, April 18-29, 2023, Tanya will make a new set of prints for her Open Space exhibition, Hair Prints, and undertake a series of Open Rehearsals, expanding on the embodied process that she and dance artist Ivanie Aubin-Malo began in Vancouver in 2022 in response to the initial hair prints. The inspiration and points of reference clearly signal relationships to the body, the land, and in learning as central to this work. For Tanya, the significance of Indigenous women's relationships to plant medicines has also introduced an approach that looks to the seasons to determine materials and methods. For Hair Prints this means Tanya will now only work with berries to produce prints in the Spring and Summer.
Returning to the body, preparing together. This is enacted through breath and bodywork shared by project contributors. By undertaking this work in this way, alongside visits with the land, we are redetermining the parameters of what is required to do this kind of work and opening up necessary space for building long-term relationships through modes that are specifically relevant to the project itself.
Respondents
Expanding the process and dialogue around Hair Prints, Tanya invited artists Camille Georgeson-Usher, Jennifer Van de Pol, and Duane Linklater and curator Toby Lawrence to participate as respondents. Alongside Ivanie Aubin-Malo and Mina Linklater, the group spent time in shared preparatory activities throughout Tanya’s residency.
Responses will be gradually installed in the gallery, as they are completed.
Hair Prints is presented as part of the 2023 series Wayfinders, the ones we breathe with.
Curated by Toby Lawrence
Generously supported by
Banner images: Tanya Lukin Linklater, Hair Prints (rehearsal documentation), 2023. With Ivanie Aubin-Malo at Open Space. Photos: Toby Lawrence (1) and Miles Giesbrecht (2 & 3). Jennifer Van de Pol and Toby Lawrence, Hair Prints Response and At the Ocean Shore, installation view, Open Space, Victoria, BC, 2023. Photo: Toby Lawrence (4).
Artists & Contributors
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Tanya Lukin Linklater's performances, works for camera, installations, and writings cite Indigenous dance and visual art lineages, our structures of sustenance, and weather as an organizing force. She undertakes embodied inquiry and rehearsal in relation to scores and ancestral belongings in museums and elsewhere alongside dance artists, composers, and poets. Through collaboration, her work reckons with histories that affect Indigenous peoples’ lived experiences, (home)lands, and ideas. She continues to write in relation to what she has come to call felt structures.
Her forthcoming and recent exhibitions include the 14th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea; Aichi Triennale, Japan; Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver; Chicago Architecture Biennial; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville; Heard Museum, Phoenix; Jan Kaps, Cologne; La Biennale de Montréal; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Oakville Galleries, Ontario; New Museum Triennial, New York; Remai Modern, Saskatoon; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Toronto Biennial of Art; and Winnipeg Art Gallery.
Tanya Lukin Linklater is represented by Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver. She is the recipient of the Wexner Center for the Arts Artist Residency Award and The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts. Slow Scrape, her first collection of poetry, was published by The Centre for Expanded Poetics and Anteism, Montréal (2020) with a second edition published by Talonbooks, Vancouver (2022). Her Sugpiaq homelands, Afognak and Port Lions, are in southwestern Alaska, and she lives and works in Nbisiing Anishinaabeg aki in Ontario.
Photo: Liz Lott
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Wolastoq and Quebecois dancer, choreographer and curator, Ivanie Aubin-Malo invests herself in projects that reflect on ecology and human ethics regarding our environment. She has also danced Fancy Shawl, a powwow style since 2015, connecting with the spirit of transformation and celebrating women’s audacity. Her artistic research as a creator aims to shed light on the beauty of the Wolastoqey language and its relation to the land and the body. Aubin-Malo additionally contributes to connecting Indigenous movement-based artists in order to break isolation, cultivate inspiration, facilitate knowledge sharing, and encourage certain experimental collaborations. With this intention, she has helped spark recurring events in and around Montreal/Tio’tia:ke/Mooniyang: MAQAHATINE (Tangente and l’Agora de la danse, 2020-2022, Tangente 2023-2025); OHAKWARONT (CCOV, 2022-) and Nikak Tagocniok (Théâtre Gilles-Vigneault, 2023-). As a dancer, she regularly collaborates with Tanya Lukin Linklater and worked with k.g Guttman, Andreane Leclerc, Corpuscule Danse, Lara Kramer and Alexandre Morin, amongst others. Alongside Natasha Kanapé-Fontaine, she is currently co-creating a performance on wolastoqiyik and Innuat giants and oral stories. Recently based in L’Islet (QC), she plans to open a Wolastoqey Cultural Center where culture can be celebrated and revitalized in the area while connecting with others.Photo: Julie Artacho
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Jennifer Van de Pol is an interdisciplinary artist and Iyengar Yoga teacher based in Victoria, BC, on the traditional lands of the Lekwungen peoples. She holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College, Vermont, and a BFA in Media Arts from Emily Carr University. Jennifer's artistic and Yoga practices are interwoven and in constant conversation. She is honoured to explore Yoga with co-learners in many communities - currently with Songhees Nation, the University of Victoria, and through her website.
"My art practice is rooted in listening. To this body, to the land and water, to each breath, to others' bodies, and breathing.... I give what I hear/feel form in ways that often look like; Mark-making (drawing/painting) artist’s books, video and social practice projects. I make maps of what is arising as I experience the present moment, because I believe these moments truly matter. Giving form to these moments is a way to navigate the space in between you and I, and invite us to remember our interconnectedness."