Deer Hide Journals

Seed beads and porcupine quills on raw deer hide, 2020.

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This piece was started as a resident of Contingencies of Care, a virtual residency held in June 2020 exploring the notion of care and co-hosted by OCAD University, University of British Columbia Okanagan, BUSH Gallery and Toronto Biennial of Art.

Exploring beadwork and quillwork as a method of visual journaling, this work is an in-progress collaborative project between myself, the land and non-human nations that creatively explores the reciprocal notion of care we provide to one another. During this two week residency I spent each day beading on/with my ancestral land. I completed the first journal entry with additional entries to be done over future months, with the goal to eventually fill the hide completely. The purpose of this piece as a long-term work in progress is to facilitate continual acts of visiting and taking care of the land that surpasses beyond Western temporalities, and centres Indigenous notions of time and place. These moments of visiting shared intimately between the land and I are forever held within the beads. This space holds beautiful, radical possibilities of kinship and notions of care.