Kiskisiwin (The Act Of Remembering) ᑭᐢᑭᓯᐃᐧᐣ
Morgan Possberg
Morgan Possberg: Kiskisiwin (The Act Of Remembering) ᑭᐢᑭᓯᐃᐧᐣ
August 4, 2023 to September 16, 2023
Exhibition Brochure available here.
Scroll further down to read Ella White In response to Morgan Possberg’s Kiskisiwin
“Memory is thus one domain where affect becomes a noticeable pressure point” -Billy-Ray Belcourt.
In the course of empire building, visual semiotics became the cultural foundation for western knowledge production and memory. In comparison, Indigenous ways of knowing adopts a more experiential and sensorial approach towards the construction of memory that does not rely on visuality as the cornerstone of remembrance but a spectrum of human senses that contribute to a holistic understanding and sense of place and self.
In Morgan Possberg's "Kiskisiwin," the artist constructs conceptual parallelisms between paskwâw mostos (buffalo) and the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island. The parallels drawn between the buffalos and Indigenous bodies move beyond the disappearance of the buffalo from the prairies as a convolution of ongoing colonization and exploitation of the land by settlers, and ties to the spoor, sound and blood of the buffalo, strongly linked to memories of the land and Indigenous blood knowledge.
Through an amalgamation of mediums and materials that include assemblage, plant taxidermy, olfactory composition and sonic experimentation, Possberg problematizes colonial romanticization and exploitation of the prairies and reclaims the steppes, the materials it produces and its flora and fauna as entities filled with life and agency.
By combining multiple sensory aspects, the visuals are deemphasized and the viewer of Possberg's work can refocus on embodied knowledge and Indigenous blood memory in relation to remembrance. According to Possberg, the act of remembering expands beyond the grief of lost skills, language and cultures and becomes a way to rebuild connections in a contemporary world, a sacred ritual in its own right. Through her abstraction of the prairies and the paskwâw mostos, centring sounds and scents, Possberg subverts the colonial notion of Veni, Vidi, Vici and poses the premise of Indigenous memory construction and place marking as one that takes into account the evidence of things unseen.
Olumoroti George
Artistic Director
About the Artist
Morgan Possberg Denne grew up in Calgary, Alberta and spent a large part of their childhood in Shediac, New Brunswick. They received a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree with a focus in Textiles / Fashion from NSCAD University in Halifax in 2019, and subsequently attended the University of Calgary for a Master of Architecture Degree. Morgan has most recently attended the Banff centre for an Indigenous Haute Couture residency, taught traditional fish skin tanning classes in Prince Edward Island / Epekwitk, and is currently working on a commission for the Calgary Public Library. They are a millennial scoop and foster care survivor; with settler, Cree, Metis, and Chippewa familial connections. Morgan is both a writer and an artist with a focus in writing about the modern Two-spirit Indigenous experience in Canada, queerness, colonialism, institutional / systemic racism, and uplifting BIPOC / Indigenous artists. Through their work, Morgan explores alternate stories to fill gaps created by colonialism with a focus on capturing inner truth and alternate possibilities.
Through their visual artwork they create imaginative, illustrative objects which could be seen as pieces of possible narratives, different ways to connect with the past and potential futures through layers of abstraction with no right or wrong answer. They focus on creating objects which have agency and are a part of an Indigenous based worldview and oral history. What matters is not whether the objects accurately recreate the past, but rather to capture an inner truth and a possible alternative reality of the object through a modern interpretation. In a sense, creating new culture from a series of “what-ifs” and new stories / lore.
OUTRO:
Ella White In response to Morgan Possberg’s Kiskisiwin
I’m going to get us out of this turbulence, you say. We are plummeting back to earth. My earth unfolded rapidly. My earth began to map the plains that took shape of the old rich women’s jackets; it was not just the jackets. Animals held the shape of what used to be, what my fingers touched and touched and touched. You should know touching is not possessive unless you mean to leave yourself behind.
I hadn’t meant to leave myself behind, but when I returned like a habit, I was always there. My body imprinted like a casket, the way indigo stays to fabric, the way oil pulls away oil, the way the sea continuously returns to brush the sand.
I need you to take me out of this, I say. This memory, a shaking, rattling plane fleeing from the sky. It hurts my bones, that feeling of carrying my own skin too long, you know it too. There is this ritual I’ve developed of pulling out parts of myself, pulling myself apart, just to give you something small.
Bear it, you say. A memory is a pressure point in my skin, the soft part where a throat caves in, the flesh under the bicep. I press bone to bone, I push teeth into more teeth. My jaw grinds itself like it’s winding. I dream in the language I cannot speak, and all over my body aches to be home in the place that is no longer. I have nightmares of everything I’ve ever wanted.
Plummeting to my earth, visibly bound by borders constrained into squares. What can you make of me now? I’m more animal than I’ve ever known. I’ve been living, doing things to make my skin fit easier on my bones, and it’s just the way I should have always lived. We’ve only been taught how to survive, instead of how to flourish.
The body remembers more than the brain can conjure, sweat pooling on its sticky back, spit foaming at the corners of lips, new hair prickling up against old skin. I have walked for so long only to have returned. In the same way geese have migrated miles, and the way salmon know to come back to where they began.
—Ella White
Ella White is a Gitxaala Nation and Japanese artist and writer from Burnaby. Her practice is interdisciplinary, including printmaking, drawing, non-fiction, and poetry. She gravitates towards archival sources from conversation, photography and learning knowledge from her grandfather. She is actively working towards incorporating learned words of Smal’gyax language and Gitxaala stories, as well as the stories of migration and internment from her Japanese Canadian ancestry. Ella is currently pursuing her BFA in Visual Arts at Emily Carr University with a focus in print media and minor in Art + Text. Her current work explores the idea of mutuality in the depravities of the minority experience, and is interested in exploring opacity as a means of protection.
