Thursday October 29, 2020
As we continue to live our lives in distance, the Vancouver Art Gallery was pleased to welcome back Indigenous Brilliance for their Fall Reading Session, a poetic and artistic response to the exhibition "Uncommon Language". Invited poets Afuwa, Jónína Kirton and Michelle Sylliboy joined Emily Dundas Oke to respond to the Eurocentric promise—and presumption—of a single overarching artistic language and instead offer decidedly relational and specific expressions.
Organized by Room Magazine and Massy Books, Indigenous Brilliance is a quarterly reading and performance series dedicated to raising the voices of Indigenous women, Two-Spirit and queer writers, artists and storytellers. It is a collective approach to realizing resurgence, a coming together with the shared desire of celebrating Indigenous stories and the different ways we think, share and perform.
The Vancouver Art Gallery is situated on traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-waututh) Nations, and is respectful of the Indigenous stewards of the land it occupies, whose rich cultures are fundamental to artistic life in Vancouver and to the work of the Gallery. Indigenous Brilliance, Massy Books and Room Magazine also acknowledge that this event takes place across Turtle Island.
