The Uplifting

2016

Single channel video installation

Dimensions vary

“Both laborious and playful, The Uplifting stretches time and defies expectations with a performance reminiscent of Butoh but anchored in Lakota codification and in  contemporary concepts of indigenous resilience. The work’s name speaks to verticality that at times seems to contradict the performer’s movement across the floor from left to right. A shaft of light bisects the screen and delineates the performance space, drawing a line between the more obscure spaces above and below the performer’s trajectory. The simplicity of the set and the performer’s strenuous movements put into question a sense of direction that is stable and unchanging: Is the performer moving horizontally or vertically? Does her shadow mirror her or precede her? A symbol in the background resembling a medicine wheel rendered in red fades in and out of view, evoking the four directions in equal measure. The performer wears a red jumpsuit, a symbolically loaded garment that recalls systemic oppression through incarceration and the colour red ascribed by white settlers to a racialized people. However the performer’s movement and costume also arouse a sense of lifeblood, of survival in the face of adversity, adaptability and modernity. Standing and revealing a fringed pouch toward the end of the loop, the performer figuratively exposes her heart and her history, tying her body and actions to the ever-present but obscure medicine wheel in the centre of the frame.”

– Aaron Pollard, for Où Sommes Nous, an exhibition at the Mulhouse Kunsthalle, in collaboration with White Frame, Basel and OBORO, Montreal