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Gathering: Tanya Lukin Linklater

Artist Residency

Gallery view of four freestanding triangular blue sculptures, prints displayed on a riser and the walls, and a hanging, U-shaped, red fabric work.

Tanya Lukin Linklater brings together Indigenous artists, poets, and scholars for an intimate, daylong event held in conjunction with her exhibition in our galleries.

Celebrating inner blades of grass (soft), inner blades of grass (cured), inner blades of grass (bruised by the weather), on view through August 21, Lukin Linklater and a community of colleagues and guests will participate in conversations, activations, and performances. Join this multigenerational gathering of people who have played pivotal roles in Lukin Linklater’s thinking in relation to weather, embodiment, and ancestral belongings. The conversations, workshops, and performances will be led by Ivanie Aubin-Malo, Johannah Bird, Camille Georgeson-Usher, Brennan Govender, Paige Restoule, and Rosy Simas.
 
The event is free with RSVP. Registrants are welcome to attend the full program or individual sessions. Light refreshments will be available during program breaks.

IMAGE CAPTION
Tanya Lukin Linklater: Inner blades of grass (soft) inner blades of grass (cured) inner blades of grass (bruised by the weather), installation view at the Wexner Center for the Arts, 2024.
 

Schedule

Opening

Noon–12:30 PM 
Galleries
Contextualizing the program and place with guest curator Kelly Kivland.

Song

12:30–12:55 PM
Galleries
Singing from Paige Restoule and Brennan Govender alongside the work of Tanya Lukin Linklater.

Conversation

1:00–1:30 PM 
Galleries
Conversation with Paige Restoule and Tanya Lukin Linklater around community and cultural work.

15-minute break
1:30–1:45 PM

Workshop

1:45–3:15 PM
Performance Space
Ivanie Aubin-Malo leads a dance and movement workshop.

15-minute break
3:15–3:30 PM

Reading and Conversation

3:30–4:20 PM
Galleries
Reading and conversation featuring the literary work of Johannah Bird and paintings by Camille Georgeson-Usher.

Performative Lecture
4:25–5:15 PM 
Performance Space
Performance and lecture by Rosy Simas featuring media projections.

Closing

5:15–5:30 PM 
Galleries
Acknowledgments and thanks will close out the event.

Ivanie Aubin-Malo smiles in a portrait photograph.

Ivanie Aubin-Malo, photo: Maria Vartanova.

Tanya Lukin Linklater poses for a portrait photograph.

Tanya Lukin Linklater, photo: Liz Lott.

ohannah Bird poses for a portrait photograph.

Johannah Bird, photo: Justin Andrews.

Rosy Simas poses in a portrait photograph.

Rosy Simas, photo: Tim Rummelhoff, courtesy of McKnight Fellowships for Choreographers 2016.

Camille Usher smiles in a photograph.

Camille Usher.

About the artists

Ivanie Aubin-Malo chevron-down chevron-up

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 also has danced fancy shawl, a powwow style, since 2015. Her artistic research hopes to shed light on the beauty of the Wolastoqey language and its relation to the land and the body. Through the collective MAQAHATINE, based in Tio’tia:ke/Montreal, Aubin-Malo contributes to connecting Indigenous movement-based artists by organizing a dozen workshops each year for and by this vast community. Based in L’islet (QC) since 2021, she fosters the idea of a Wolastoqey Cultural Center where culture can be celebrated and revitalized in the area while getting to know others.

Johannah Bird chevron-down chevron-up

Johannah Bird is a Saulteaux/Anishinaabe of Peguis First Nation and a PhD candidate in English at McMaster University. Currently, she is finishing her dissertation, which traces how Nêhiyawak (Cree) and Anishinaabeg (Ojibwe) expressed their related theories of knowledge in language influenced by and connected to the environment of the Canadian prairies in the late nineteenth century. Bird’s creative and research interests include archives, affect, life writing, and poetry.

Camille Georgeson-Usher chevron-down chevron-up

Camille Georgeson-Usher is a Coast Salish/Sahtu Dene/Scottish scholar, curator, and writer from Galiano Island, British Columbia, and is assistant professor of modern and contemporary Indigenous art at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Through her research, she is interested in the ways that peoples move together through space, how public art becomes a site for gathering, and intimacies with everyday life from an Indigenous perspective. She uses her practice as a long-distance runner as a discipline that connects thoughts, ideas, understanding, and feelings with her physical body and experiences and as a process for accessing alternative forms of sensing place.
 

Brennan Govender chevron-down chevron-up

Brennan Govender (Moose Cree First Nation) is the drum keeper, lead singer and cofounder of High Ridge Singers (started in 2008). Based in North Bay, Ontario, Brennan sings competitively at powwows with High Ridge. They have been invited as host drum at many powwows in Ontario, Quebec, and elsewhere. Brennan is also a round dance singer, participates in ceremony, and is well-known and asked to serve in the cultural role of stickman at round dances in Ontario. 

Tanya Lukin Linklater chevron-down chevron-up

Tanya Lukin Linklater has recently participated in the Aichi Triennale, Japan; Gwangju Biennale, South Korea; New Museum Triennial, New York; and Toronto Biennial of Art. Her work has also been shown at the Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; among other institutions. She is represented by Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver. Her first collection of poetry was Slow Scrape (published by The Centre for Expanded Poetics and Anteism Books in 2020 and by Talonbooks in 2022). A catalogue, Tanya Lukin Linklater: My mind is with the weather—copublished by the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Oakville Galleries; and the Southern Alberta Art Gallery Maansiksikaitsitapiitsinikssin—was released in spring 2024. Lukin Linklater’s Alutiiq/Sugpiaq homelands are in southwestern Alaska where much of her family continues to live. She is a tribally enrolled member of the Native Villages of Afognak and Port Lions in the Kodiak archipelago. 
 

Paige Restoule chevron-down chevron-up

Paige Restoule is a councillor for Dokis First Nation, chairperson of the Dokis First Nation Cultural Committee (organizing the Dokis First Nation powwow annually), and a cultural consultant who is often asked to facilitate workshops with children, youth, and women. She sings for community gatherings with High Ridge Singers and has been a women’s powwow dancer for decades. She is known for her practices of regalia making, dancing, and beading. Her work to protect the water led her to serve as a Water Protector at Standing Rock, North Dakota, as a community delegate from Dokis First Nation. She graduated from Trent University with a BAH psychology and minor in Indigenous studies. She is dedicated to Anishinaabe teachings, youth, and the community and participates in ceremony. 

Rosy Simas chevron-down chevron-up

Rosy Simas is a transdisciplinary and dance artist. She lives and works in Mni Sota Makoce (Minneapolis, Minnesota). Simas is an enrolled member of the Seneca Nation. Her knowledge of her Haudenosaunee family and lineage is the underpinning of her relationship to culture and history—stored in her body and expressed through her work—of moving people, images, and objects that she makes for stage and installation. Simas’s work weaves personal and collective identity themes with family, sovereignty, equality, and healing. Simas creates dance work with a team of Native and BIPOC artists, driven by movement vocabularies developed through deep listening.
 
Simas is a Doris Duke Artist, Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (NACF) Fellow, Guggenheim Fellow, McKnight Foundation Fellow, Dance/USA Fellow, United States Artists Fellow, a Joyce Awardee, and NACF SHIFT Awardee. She has received multiple awards from the New England Foundation for the Arts, the MAP Fund, and the National Performance Network. She is the Artistic Director of Rosy Simas Danse and is currently an artist in residence at the Walker Art Center.

LEARNING & PUBLIC PRACTICE PROGRAMS MADE POSSIBLE BY
American Electric Power Foundation
CoverMyMeds
Huntington
Martha Holden Jennings Foundation
 
ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY
Ingram-White Castle Foundation
The Ohio State University Office of Outreach & Engagement
Ohio Arts Council
Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation
 
SUPPORT FOR LEARNING & PUBLIC PRACTICE RESIDENCIES PROVIDED BY
Mike and Paige Crane

WEXNER CENTER PROGRAMS MADE POSSIBLE BY  
Ohio Department of Development

Greater Columbus Arts Council

The Wexner Family 
Institute of Museum and Library Services

Ohio Arts Council, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts 
CampusParc

Nationwide Foundation

Ohio State’s Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme

The Columbus Foundation 
Axium Packaging
Vorys, Sater, Seymour, and Pease

ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY
Mike and Paige Crane

Nancy Kramer 
Ohio State Energy Partners  
Ohio History Fund/Ohio History Connection  
Larry and Donna James

David Crane and Elizabeth Dang

Bruce and Joy Soll

Melissa Gilliam and William Grobman
Rebecca Perry Damsen and Ben Towle

Jones Day  
Alex and Renée Shumate

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Gathering: Tanya Lukin Linklater