Yonge-Dundas Square is home to Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival installation "Calico & Camouflage: Assemble!"
Very pleased to announce that Yonge-Dundas Square is a co-presenter and home to the the digital and physical installation by Tiohtia:ke/Montreal-based Mohawk artist Skawennati for Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival this year.
Skawennati creates projects that posit Indigenous futures, and in this new site-responsive installation, cyberpunk activist avatars reinforce the inseparability of personal fashion and protest. In this digital exhibit, each screen displays avatars that descend into the scene, as if rallied from a not-too-distant future. Young, confident, and Indigenous, they land on a rooftop and strut toward the camera, then seemingly through it, to exit the screen. They then assemble on the concrete pillars, as human-sized cut-out still figures. Skawennati’s “machinimas” and “machinimagraphs”—respectively, moving and still images made in a virtual environment—point to the inherent politicization of Indigenous life on occupied land, and to an inextinguishable spirit.
The tactical positioning of Calico & Camouflage: Assemble! at Yonge-Dundas Square activates Skawennati’s prevailing belief that “The Future is Ind!genous,” as another protest sign declares.
Skawennati’s work brings Indigenous realities, values, and voices to the forefront of collective consciousness and demonstrates that “Resistance in Fertile” in both digital and physical worlds.
For more information, visit: https://scotiabankcontactphoto.com/2021/exhibition/skawennati-calico-camouflage-assemble/#qr