Black and Indigenous Futures

work by Akira Iyashikei, bee rodriguez and Keshia Talking Waters De Freece Lawrence

October 5 – 29, 2023

featuring guest artwork by Kathleen Spirit Dancer Mann Crippen and Janey Hecht

On View Sundays
11 A – 2 P

Opening Reception

Saturday, October 7th
5:30 – 8:30 P

featuring opening prayer by Akira

6:30 P – Performance by Akira + Sinica

7:00 P – Artist Discussion on the exhibition and the Winnemucca Indian Colony hosted by Akira

The future of Black and Indigenous people is one of healing through the liberation of the land.

This photo document series is reflective of the awakening power that emerges from Black and Indigenous resistance movements that I have witness to, alongside my journey of deepening my relationship with land and using philosophies of the land to build a world outside settler colonialism.

In this second iteration of my largest body of work, I look at the lessons from the Winnemucca Indian Colony Frontline, in Winnemucca, Nevada, taking a further look into ego and trauma.

How does ego and trauma affect us in the way we show up to resistance spaces?

How can land help us heal and build a world outside of settler colonialism?

What is your relationship to land?..

- Akira,
Light that heals

Home Not Home

How far I am from the land I was born.
Immense nostalgia invades my mind.
Oh land of the sun, I sight to see you.
How far I live, without light, without love.
I would like to cry, I would like to die of feeling.

In 1994, My mother and I were forced out of the lands (Mexico) of my grandmothers, to be raised in the shadow of illegalization in the north (U.S).

To be a person without a nation, liberated me to seek the land and its truths.

Akira is an undocumented native from south central Mexico, whose work focuses on healing our relationship with land and our fight to liberate it from the power of coloniality.

At the age of three, Akira was brought to the states to escape the poverty of their village brought upon the economic devastation of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

After attending college in Chicago, 2015, Akira left the city to work at farms in the Midwest to further their connection to the land that had been severed by colonialism. Returning to the city in 2019, they started to use photography to capture the truths that came from witnessing frontlines in person. In the city and in the rural parts of the country, Frontlines mark the border between reality and illusion, and the connection modernity has to settler colonialism. 

@_indio___

Related Programming Presented by Akira

Akira – Art Talk and Slideshow Screening

Friday, October 13th
4 – 7 p
Featured artist discusses their largest body of work, Black and Indigenous Futures – starting from the beginning and spanning four years of frontline documenting.

Akira + Anysquared Performances

Saturday, October 14th
4:30 – 7:30 p
Join Akira and members from Logan Square's art group, Anysquared, for a night of joy and dancing, celebrating the land and our existence!

Building Relationship with Land

Sunday, October 22nd
3 – 7 p

RAMAPO, GOOD RELATIVES

work by Keshia Talking Waters De Freece Lawrence

RAMAPO, GOOD RELATIVES is the liberating visual of under recognized New Jersey, New York and Connecticut tribal peoples, The Ramapough. The photographs and microfilm imagery has been rematriated and liberated from the Vineland NJ residential school archives, while the vibrant depictions of land and water are exactly that. RAMAPO, GOOD RELATIVES is placing relatives back in good relation with one another and space. August 15th, 2023 lead Ramapough Clan Mother and Cultural Knowledge Bearer passed away at 72 years of life. Kathleen Spirit Dancer Mann Crippen's famous beadwork and baby moccasins (which she would make for every new child of the tribe), are included in this exhibition as an honoring.

Keshia Talking Waters De Freece Lawrence is a Ramapough Lenape Munsee, Deer Clan member. De Freece’s academic and professional background is in International Law and Conflict Negotiations. Over the past four years, Talking Waters has been involved in rematriation efforts for her tribe through artistic expression. Reclaiming artifacts and photographs, by reclaiming Elders and Ancestors, and placing peoples back on land and in community. De Freece’s artwork is to evoke ecosystem, community and self- negotiation through lively positioning, colors and more than human relatives.

@sakimaxkwe

Archiving Memories

work by bee rodriguez

bee's archives attempt to preserve memories of ancestors, traditions, and changing landscapes. they draw inspiration from the different ways their kin relate stories of land, movement, and resisting colonialism: oral, recipes, cook-outs, vhs and disposable camera archives. 

bee is a land-based creative archiving personal stories and experiences using mediums like poetry, photography, and black-book sketching.

@abeja.explorando