To accompany the exhibition Sovereign Acts III, which opens March 25 at The James Gallery, artist-curator Wanda Nanibush is holding a day of talks and performances around the multi-layered history and practice of Indigenous cultural performance. Speakers and performers include Demian DinéYahzi', Alan Michelson, Kent Monkman, Wanda Nanibush, Joseph Pierce, Jolene Rickard, and more.
Sovereign Acts III explores the relationship between nineteenth-century performing “Indians” and contemporary performance art; how Indigenous artists have taken up this history to create self-representations in photography, performance, video, and installation that challenge ideas of normative and static identity. The artists in the exhibition turn to a range of aesthetic strategies, including re-enactment, remixing, memorialization, mimicry, parody, masquerade, and portraiture, underscoring the interdisciplinary nature of Indigenous art.
Program of events:
Welcome: Claire Bishop
Introduction: Wanda Nanibush
Poem: Joel Sedano
Performance: Kent Monkman, The Emergence of a Legend
Performance: Jackson Polys, Playing Indian
Panel: "Visual Sovereignty" (Jolene Rickard, Alan Michelson, Joseph Pierce, and Wanda Nanibush)
Performance: Demian DinéYazhi’, An Infected Sunrise (with Rain from Heaven)
