Lowriders

Last weekend I got to participate in a dope workshop with Dylan Miner and built this bad boy. We built 4 bikes for the 4 directions, mine was white; the North. It’s going to be part of the Beat Nation exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

“Beat Nation reflects a generation of artists who juxtapose urban youth culture with Aboriginal identity in entirely innovative and unexpected ways. Using hip hop and other forms of popular culture, artists create surprising new cultural hybrids—in painting, sculpture, installation, performance and video—that reflect the changing demographics of Aboriginal people today.

In Vancouver, the unceded territories of the Coast Salish Nations have been a meeting ground for urban Aboriginal youth for decades and, since the early 1990s, hip hop has been a driving force of activism in the community. The roots of hip hop culture and music have been transformed into forms that echo current realities of young people, creating dynamic forums for storytelling and indigenous language, as well as new modes of political expression. This movement has been influential across disciplines—similar strategies appear in the visual arts where artists remix, mash-up and juxtapose the old with the new, the rural with the urban, traditional and contemporary as a means to rediscover and reinterpret Aboriginal culture within the shifting terrains of the mainstream.

While this exhibition takes its starting point from hip hop, it branches out to include artists who use pop culture, graffiti, fashion and other signifiers of urban life in combination with more traditional forms of Aboriginal identity. Artists create unique cultural hybrids that include graffiti murals with Haida figures, sculptures carved out of skateboard decks, abstract paintings with form-line design, live video remixes with Hollywood films, and hip hop performances in Aboriginal languages, to name a few. While focused on artists working along the West Coast, Beat Nation brings together artists from across the Americas and reveals the shared connections between those working in vastly different places.

As signifiers of Aboriginal identity and culture continue to shift and transform, and older traditions find renewed meaning in new forms of expression, one thing remains constant: a commitment to politics, to storytelling, to Aboriginal languages, to the land and rights, whether it be with drums skins or turntables, natural pigments or spray paint, ceremonial dancing or break dancing.

Organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery and based on an initiative of grunt gallery. Co-curated by Kathleen Ritter, associate curator, Vancouver Art Gallery, and Tania Willard, a Secwepemc artist, designer and curator.” – Vancouver Art Gallery

Loves Lost

A few samples of illustrations for a book that I am working on Loves Lost: Portraits of items misplaced while inebriated in 2011.

neath the white sand

slides taken in PEI

Chilkat Raven’s Tail Weave

Mahsi to Cheryl Samuel for teaching us this beautiful weave.

 

masks

arooo

banner by Ronnie Dean  Harris.
http://vimaf.com/
I’m helping out with the festival and we are looking for volunteers! If interested click here.

 

cloak n slips

no face regalia

the giant and the deer

Photo by Arseni Khamzin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Touching colours of water.

Bloody Sneakers: The Legend of Butterfly and Wolfgirl’s First Kill.

Went to go and pick berries and got a beast. Twas the first time my dad’s brand new 30 06 was fired. Dropped it in one shot. Bonnie calls me “Hunts With Berry Bucket.” Mahsi Cho, Vadzhai.

the burning garbage of eden

2242 kilometers into the arctic

On a caribou bone I made a wish. With an owl I sent you a gift, but the post was striking and it got hit. I cast my nets of inter by the porcupine river. My teeth chatter and it feels like winter. The igod refutes the arctic radio waves and ignores my payment praise. The canon quit at rampart’s grave. Humble, humble, fumble pie.

attempt at

It feels as if I have gathered more than two fistfuls of earth in my palms and every time I move one hand to compact the earth, a little falls or shifts out of place. The more I move my hands to compact the earth, the less I am able to keep track of where my hands had been placed and the more chaotic my relationship to that substance becomes.

I am realizing that I have interesting criticality to bring to the table but that it does not manifest in sophisticated forms. They key to unlock this is time, a richness I watch others indulge in from afar. I have been unable to find all of the hours in the passing days to sincerely complete my endeavors, to sincerely connect to others.

Why do I feel the need to over-personalize my artist statement? Does the reader gain anything from knowing this personal information? Does it help or hinder the reading? Am I providing too narrow of a lens to view my work?

What is my methodology? How would I approach curation and participation? Is art the most appropriate tool in terms of participatory practice? I am lacking criticality here and would like to further investigate the problems of accommodation. I think I need to be a little less tame about all of this; I am still being too safe and hiding behind theory. I am fooling some, but not all by over-intellectualizing my work. My practice is very segregated at the moment. “Your work doesn’t quite alienate enough people at the moment, you need to push it further.”

I really feel like I need to get out the city and that I am losing my mind a bit here. Perhaps it is because of school and stress that I am feeling so repelled from this place. Perhaps it is my nomadic tendency, perhaps I am needing my yearly escape, but I am really feeling called to be up North. It is a difficult feeling to put into words, but I feel it in my bones. I want to breath in that air that is so pure its sharp, I want to be on the river in a boat with dad gutting fish, I want to get my hands dirty and my mind clear. I need to be humbled. I want to go to bed tired and sore from a fucking hard day’s work. I need to get out of this city that has a legitimized arena for intellectual masturbation. Although it has relevance and meaning in a specific circle that I have managed to wedge myself into, it’s currency is unknown in the places that matter most.

 

impersonating dead men from the depps of her heart

 

 

 

inside

I am interested in human behavior, challenging social barriers, soluble personalities, urban Indians, gender studies, queer culture, glitter, face painting, other campy things and hunting. My work is inspired by Maria Abramovic, Mike Parr, Brian Jungian, Allyson Mitchell, Donna Haraway, Valerie Solanas, Natalie Halford, Leigh Bowery, Cocorosie and Rebecca Belmore.
I want to revisit some themes that I had been working with a few years ago. I have felt conflicted about working with native subject matter and was not pleased with the way that I was addressing it. I feel that the work was naïve and relied too heavily on blatant signifiers. I decided to abandon ‘Native art making’ to contemplate just what this means and pursue other art modes for a period of time. However, being an artist who is Aboriginal, I would like to revisit this facet of my practice now that I feel my work has advanced sufficiently on its own sans Indian content. I am interested in questioning authorities of aboriginality and the performativity of race and gender. In the next few months I will be working on a performance piece where I hire an attractive caucasian male to enact my performances.

 

No Sweat in the Arctic – Old Crow Christmas

I am writing to you on new years eve from my brother’s place in the ‘sub’ division in Old Crow, Yukon. minus 35 outside or something along those lines. Cold and windy enough to make your eyes water as the wind blows snow into youR face, freezing your already watery eyelashes together as you try to drive skidoo home because dad and his new p.y.t wanted to walk home from auntie Glena’s. Its been great to hang with my dad, brother, nephew and a couple of 80 year olds, do some sewing, writing, pondering and grounding… and eating way to much chocolate and caribou and ham and candy canes and hard candy and cookies. (puhhhhdge) Fudge? I guess I have just been realizing how little truly matters and is fulfilling in Vancouver and in the modern city central lives that we weave for ourselves, I can empathize with your needing to get outta there. Not to say that the lives we lead are superficial but its easy to get derailed, for me anyways, and lose sight of what has meaning and weight to it. I just hope that I can hold onto the little morsels of wisdom I have uncovered here and can keep up this nice, wholesome feeling pace. So many powerfully small things occur each day here but one would not see them otherwise or elsewhere, like holding my brothers hand for the first time and watching my nephew grow up.

Humans and Christmas. Even though many may not believe in a lot of the founding principles or current embodiments, humans love Christmas. I totally got caught up in Christmas this year. Hell I even bought a bunch of presents from Walmart. Human tendencies: love organizing, planning, cooking, looking forward to one day in particular. Decorating (home-making). Gathering and sharing/giving to friends and family. Perhaps the reason holidays such as Christmas have continued to be so popular and adopted by other cultures is that it fulfills these basic human desires, needs and habits in ways that our society and life-style no longer provides. What if we took the time to create our own holiday/celebration ideal for us? For our family/community? A way to house our creative, instinctive, family driven needs? Festivals, events, ceremony?

Video by Melissa Frost and Dennis Allen

swedish. savary.

I journeyed to Vancouver Island, Cortes, Refuge Cove and Savary with S(weet-ish)wedish photographer, Maria Wallstam.

Here are two collabs.

 

breaks and quakes in southern lands

I was not ready to leave Sydney. Not ready to say goodbye to my friends, to the places that so quickly became familiar. I miss biking on the other side of the road. I miss the hipsters in Newtown. I miss ma mamma wombat. I miss being called Zhoh, the sound of my name now unfamiliar to my ears. My ears. Are always the first to go when by heart doesn’t want to. Relocate once more. How does my body sense its departure? How does it foresee the coming change?

The title of this post is taken from a song that Katie mac wrote.

Sunday. Sounded like fun in the sun. Parks, barks and fruit marks. Snaking down ya chin as the grape juice begins. Food, food, sit and brood. Its all grood = great + good in the hood. Like a newtown rat or coocaracha. Oocha, oocha, I feel the soucha. In the side of my soul. When it leapt out. Into the spittoon bowl. Bawl, bawl, howl, howl. Till my  eyes is dry, till its bright out. Oot n a boot with no tang to shoot.

I surmise convicts and colonizers are all that lie here. Whisked away to the Whitsundays. Deep blue seas, darlin. Bow and arrows, sand stuck to my toes. Helicopter rides and a beautiful lie. Heart shaped reefs and calamari tween my teef.

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Truthfully, things have calmed down on this ship. No more late night storms. No new leaks have sprung. All is not done or undone. This ship simply sits amidst the waves. To be honest i crave. Something more adventurous or complicated.

As the last few weeks of school continued to unfold, I realized to what extent I loath technology. It makes me oscillate wildly and ventilate in a hyper(bolic) fashion. Scanners and cutting pros, all things final. Like a spinal tap. That. Throws. All associated bones into conundrums and out of sync hums. Shanghai. Oh me oh my. What is on your brain? Sail boats and freight trains? Snow monkeys and space planes?

You still occupy the same part. of my main art(ery) in allegory despite the distance dance.

faux toes.

i received an email today from a man in montreal. a friend of his recognized me on his artist website of cuba travel photos. photoes. faux toes.

so i was sitting with c-la and her family at a cafe in old havana.  a man approached: he asked to take my picture: i obliged.  months later i found myself contemplating the journey of the photograph and its ability to do what no other medium can: infinitely reproduce a single moment in time.  if later i cannot recall this moment at the ease of the photographer while glancing through his portfolio, who then owns that moment?  with an othering gaze the lens blends me into the exoticized scenery. the shutter clicks. into this mans portfolio. a prize. a “rasta girl.” one to be flaunted, never to be known. who cares? I am a ((n)idealized?) moment hanging on a wall somewhere in north america, suspended in zeros and ones on your screen. portraits. hmm. think before you shoot.

hungry ghosts

wigs wings and wondering things.
u best come bonafied personified.
alter ego.
halter beagle.
lets play murder with the winks n blinks
and act in character?
dancing later?
hand stands? are u a fan fan?
thou must dorn a wiggie
or yee will wear spaghetti
come on out to the sunny side of the street to chratalie conjus haus. adorn thyne silliest of hairs and come pre-peared. hookah bazooka joe. mulled wine n mo. 8 er 9 afta dinnah thyme.

want to help me out? want chur face on ma baday, er, blog? send me widemouthed silly faced photoes. wigs glasses big bodacious bling and animals are strongly advised. jeneen_njootli@hotmail.com

vrai film

caribou antlers 08

old crow, yukon 09

skitts 09

skittsers 09

fire in the disco! skookumchuck 09

draw a blank

featherhead by alan rahi

bdaystickyjam

all shot off my computron in my “studio” ie, parents basement, in which i currently reside. merw. columbian jewelry inspires my body wires.

gold stripes and mutant tikes

when the sun dial strikes lime green we dream dream dream

churn turn burn into crystal feather machines

concept developed by jenarla, face paint by carla manuela, photos taken by rory h of snake foot.