333 E River Road
Minneapolis, MN 55455
United States
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Join us for an artist talk featuring internationally renowned multimedia artist Skawennati, who will discuss the intersection of her practice and Indigenous Futurism, specifically as found in her world-building work TimeTraveller™, currently on view as part of the exhibition Message From Our Planet: Digital Art from the Thoma Collection.
TimeTraveller™ features nine “machinima” episodes—a hybrid of “machine” and “cinema,” referring to a way of producing movies with virtual environments, such as Second Life, an online platform for world-building. TimeTraveller™ follows Hunter, a young Mohawk man in 22nd-century Montreal who is struggling to find his place in a techno-consumerist society. Hunter uses virtual reality glasses that ostensibly transport him backward through time to experience how Indigenous people have been treated, triumphed, and transformed across centuries. Through her work, Skawennati investigates concepts of time and self, offering a postcolonial rereading of the history of the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island.
Skawennati
Skawennati investigates history, the future, and change from her perspective as an urban Kanien’kehá:ka woman and as a cyberpunk avatar. Her machinimas, still images, textiles and sculpture have been presented internationally and are included in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montreal and the Thoma Foundation, among others.
Recipient of an Honorary Doctorate from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, she is also a founding board member of daphne, Montreal’s first Indigenous artist-run centre. She co-directs Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace, a research-creation network based at Concordia University, where she received her BFA. Originally from Kahnawà:ke Mohawk Territory, Skawennati resides in Montreal. She is represented by ELLEPHANT.
