Closing on the winter solstice, What the Ocean Remembers presents new and recent works by Jordan Bennett, Kym Greeley, Thaddeus Holownia, Meagan Musseau with Jenelle Duval, Jerry Ropson, and Camille Turner. Launched with a commissioned land-based performance entitled Ta’sik Amujpa Iknmaulek (how much do we have to give you) by L’nu artist Meagan Musseau on the summer solstice and National Indigenous Day, June 21, 2021, What the Ocean Remembers is co-organized by Grenfell Art Gallery and Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in partnership with the High Commission of Canada in the United Kingdom.
Originally conceived as an exhibition for the Canada Gallery at the High Commission of Canada in the United Kingdom, this project has been adapted and enhanced for online presentation due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In January 2022 the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia and the Grenfell Art Gallery in partnership with the High Commission of Canada in the United Kingdom, will launch a digital commission by Mi’kmaq artist Jordan Bennett. Designed as an augmented reality and digital sculpture work downloadable for free to mobile devices, this commission stands as the enduring digital legacy of the online exhibition What the Ocean Remembers. It is accessible to audiences wherever they are based, allowing them to have their own site-specific experience of al’taqiaq: it spirals, activating and ‘decolonizing’ their own surroundings.
Bennett’s al’taqiaq: it spirals features a moose skull harvested in the artist’s home community of Stephenville Crossing, Ktaqamkuk and gifted to him by a family friend. After receiving this gift, Bennett then embellished the skull with the colours and patterns, evocative of the history of a porcupine quill basket held in the collection of the Museum of Vancouver before digitizing it on Mi’kma’ki land. The resulting work stands as a reclamation of cultural belongings and stories. It also celebrates and firmly reasserts, the enduring connection to the land that has been maintained by the Mi’kmaq and Beothuk Nations since time immemorial.
