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Artspeak,

Artspeak

jaz whitford

jaz whitford is a Vancouver-based mixed secwe̓pemc and settler interdisciplinary artist who embodies anti-professionalism and anti-colonialism as a way to move toward a future where indigenous knowledge and ways of being are not only respected but valued and revered. using a range of materials, forms and mediums they work to investigate and express their lived experience an understanding of spirituality, resistance, ancestral connections, and community care. Their work has recently been presented at Access Gallery, Bill Reid Gallery, Burnaby Art Gallery, and published in Rooms magazine.

Exhibitions

  • Ake Huchimagachach Ena (I’ll see you again mother) Ake Huchimagachach Ade (I’ll see you again father)

    SOLOMAN CHINIQUAY, JAZ WHITFORD
    April 27–July 1, 2023

    In Stoney there is no word for goodbye, only “Ake Huchimagachach,” which means “I’ll see you again in this life or the next.” A gesture toward boundless preservation, Soloman Chiniquay and jaz whitford create cultural memoirs, snapshots enlivening the cataclysms of colonial condition with colorful markings that re-root Indigenous accounts of place and land. The exhibition presents 22 digital images with pictorial superimposed acrylic, oil, and ink, repositioning common conceptions of land as sedated, static or commodity to something alive, vocal, and autonomous. The dynamic range of point-and-shoot images make visible quiet observations; implicating all of us in considerations of nature’s perfect undoing, framing sites of familiarity, intimacy, grief, longing, and possibility. A mirror to dispossession, Ake Huchimagachach Ena (I’ll see you again mother) Ake Huchimagachach Ade (I’ll see you again father) posits Indigenous life, labor, and connection as vital to the embodiment of sovereignty and the self-determination of land. Central to the series is a method of exchange. Their approach fuses photography, painting, and conceptualism that culminates in an offering – placing the value of art in the act of collaboratively envisioning practices of stewardship and care.

Talks & Events