SOUNDINGS: AN EXHIBITION IN FIVE PARTS

How can a score be a call and a tool for decolonization?

Curated by Candice Hopkins and Dylan Robinson, Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts features newly commissioned scores, performances, videos, sculptures and sound by Indigenous and other artists who respond to this question. Unfolding in a sequence of five parts, the scores take the form of beadwork, videos, objects, graphic notation, historical belongings, and written instructions. During the exhibition, these scores are activated at specific moments by musicians, dancers, performers and members of the public gradually filling the gallery and surrounding public spaces with sound and action.

The exhibition is cumulative, limning an ever-changing community of artworks, shared experience and engagement as it travels. Soundings shifts and evolves, gaining new artists and players in each location. Some artworks have multiple parts, others change to their own rhythm as the exhibition grows.

At the core of the exhibition is a grounding in concepts of Indigenous land and territory. To move beyond the mere acknowledgement of land and territory here means offering instructions for sensing and listening to Indigenous histories that trouble the colonial imaginary. Soundings activates and asserts Indigenous resurgence through the actions these artworks call forth.

Save the Dates

Thursday, August 18, 12 noon, Do’-gah – I don’t know [shrugging shoulders], artwork by Greg Staats performed.

Friday, September 16, NDN Love Songs, score by Peter Morin performed.

Friday, September 23, Surrounded/Surrounding, score by Tania Willard performed.

Friday, September 30, Lakota-Sys (L-Sys), Listener, performance by the artist, Kite.

Thursday, October 13, Surrounded/Surrounding, score by Tania Willard performed.

Wednesday, October 26, American Ledger (no. 1), score by Raven Chacon performed. Paul Rudy, Conductor.

Thursday, October 27, public lecture by Raven Chacon at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art.

Artists

Raven Chacon and Cristóbal Martínez, Sebastian De Line, Camille Georgeson-Usher, Kite, Germaine Koh, Aaron Leon, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Logan MacDonald, Chandra Melting Tallow, Ogimaa Mikana, Peter Morin, Diamond Point and Jordan Point, Taylor Jordan Riner, Heidi Senungetuk, Greg Staats, Olivia Whetung, and Tania Willard, with more performers, artists and composers invited to respond and create new works as the exhibition travels to each new venue.

Supporters

Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts is an exhibition curated by Candice Hopkins and Dylan Robinson, and organized by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University, Canada. The traveling exhibition is organized by Independent Curators International (ICI). The exhibition and tour are made possible, in part, with the generous support from ICI’s International Forum and the ICI Board of Trustees. Additional support has been provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts’ New Chapter Program, the Isabel and Alfred Bader Fund of Bader Philanthropies, the Ontario Arts Council, the City of Kingston Arts Fund through the Kingston Arts Council, and the George Taylor Richardson Memorial Fund at Queen’s University.

Additional support at KCAI comes from The Gattermeir Family Foundation, Travois, Sharon and John Hoffman and Linda Lighton. Other supporters through performance and academic partnerships include the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art at Johnson County Community College, the Tulsa Artist Fellowship and The Patricia and Howard Barr Institute for American Composition Studies at UMKC. A special thanks to Gaylene Crouser and the Kansas City Indian Center, Bruce Hartman, Bill Sundahl, Davin Watne, Paul Rudy, Dr. Robert Warrior, Dr. Alex Red Corn, Braxton Redeagle and the Osage Nation Language Department, and Sonié Joi Thompson-Ruffin.

About Travois

Travois is a Certified B Corporation headquartered in Kansas City. Since 1995, Travois has helped bring over $1.7 billion of investment to American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian communities. Find more information at travois.com.

About Tulsa Artist Fellowship

With the belief that arts are critical to the advancement of cultural citizenship, Tulsa Artist Fellowship supports artists and arts workers in the heart of Oklahoma’s Green Country. Socially invested artistic practitioners live and work here, intentionally engaging with our city. Tulsa Artist Fellowship is a George Kaiser Family Foundation arts initiative.

About the Curators

Candice Hopkins is a citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation and lives in Red Hook, New York. Her writing and curatorial practice explore the intersections of history, contemporary art, and Indigeneity. She is Executive Director of Forge Project, Taghkanic, NY, and Senior Curator for the 2019 and 2022 editions of the Toronto Biennial of Art. She was part of the curatorial team for the Canadian Pavilion at the fifty-eighth Venice Biennale, featuring the work of the media art collective Isuma; and co-curator of notable exhibitions including the national traveling survey Art for New Understanding: Native Voices, 1950s to Now; SITElines. 2018: Casa Tomada, SITE Santa Fe; documenta 14, Athens and Kassel; and Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Notable essays include “The Gilded Gaze: Wealth and Economies on the Colonial Frontier,” in the documenta 14 Reader; “Outlawed Social Life,” in South as a State of Mind; and “The Appropriation Debates (or The Gallows of History),” in Saturation: Race, Art, and the Circulation of Value (New Museum/MIT Press, 2020).

Dylan Robinson is a xwélmexw (Stó:lō/Skwah) artist, curator and writer. From 2015-2022 he was the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Arts at Queen’s University. His current research project xoxelhmetset te syewa:l, Caring for Our Ancestors, involves working with Indigenous artists to reconnect kinship with Indigenous life incarcerated in museums. His book, Hungry Listening (University Minnesota Press, 2020), examines Indigenous and settler colonial practices of listening, and was awarded best first book for the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, Canadian Association for Theatre Research, and the Labriola Centre American Indian National Book Award. Other publications include the edited volume Music and Modernity Among Indigenous Peoples of North America (Wesleyan University Press, 2019); and Arts of Engagement: Taking Aesthetic Action in and Beyond the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2016). As co-chair of the Indigenous Advisory Council for the Canadian Music Centre, he is currently leading a process for the reparation and redress of music that appropriates Indigenous song, and misrepresents Indigenous culture.

About ICI

Independent Curators International (ICI) produces exhibitions, events, publications, research and training opportunities for curators and diverse audiences around the world. Established in 1975 and headquartered in New York, ICI is a hub that connects emerging and established curators, artists, and art spaces, forging international networks and generating new forms of collaborations. ICI provides access to the people and practices that are key to current developments in the field, inspiring fresh ways of seeing and contextualizing contemporary art. Website: http://curatorsintl.org/exhibitions/soundings

Public Hours

• Thursday noon - 5pm
• Friday noon - 5pm
• Saturday noon - 5pm
• Sunday noon - 5pm
• Other days open by appointment, please email [email protected].

Parking - Visitor parking for the KCAI Gallery is available in the main KCAI entrance parking lot at 4415 Warwick Blvd., and in the south parking lot at Warwick and Oak.

Gallery Accessibility - KCAI Gallery has wheelchair accessible parking in the KCAI South Lot, main entrance to KCAI Gallery and gender neutral & wheelchair accessible restrooms are located in the building lobby. For inquiries regarding accessibility please reach out to KCAI's Disability Services office: +1-816-802-3440 or email [email protected].

Remote Viewing Access - Visitors can connect with the exhibition remotely, if needed. To schedule a remote viewing video please email [email protected].

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Questions? - Please email us at [email protected] if you have questions or need to make special arrangements for your visit.

About the KCAI Gallery

Launched in 2016 in the Crossroads District and relocated into the Tony Jones Studios on main campus in 2020, the KCAI Gallery: Center for Contemporary Practice serves the mission of KCAI through collaborative, curriculum based engagements with students, faculty, community and artists in residence. Our new campus gallery presents curatorial outcomes of these engagements that include exhibitions, screenings, lectures, readings, and conversations. This site and related programs hold space for critical thought, reflection, and dialog about current issues and social challenges in our world.

About the Kansas City Art Institute

Founded in 1885, the Kansas City Art Institute is one of the oldest and most respected art and design colleges in the United States. Located at 4415 Warwick in Kansas City, Mo., KCAI is a premier private, fully accredited four-year college of art and design awarding the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 13 majors. KCAI’s mission is to prepare students to transform the world creatively through art and design. Learn more at www.kcai.edu.

Image

Raven Chacon, American Ledger (No. 1), 2018, vinyl transfer. Collection of the artist.

Image Description

A black and white graphic image is separated into seven equal horizontal rows by thin black lines. Within each row, across the image reading left to right and top to bottom are plus-signs, arrow lines pointing up, western musical score symbols/notations, whistle, dots, stippled circular form, landscape/cityscape horizon line, angled lines, a star, a cross, X and a larger black horizontal box.

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