The CCA presents a new installation by performing artist Ange Loft
Looking out from windows across three sites in the CCA building is the organization’s latest installation, Visibly Iroquoian by Tsi Tkarón:to (Toronto)-based multidisciplinary performance artist Ange Loft, of Kahnawà:ke Kanien’kehá:ka Territory.
Loft was invited by the CCA to create this work as the inaugural Research Fellow for Indigenous researchers working on land restitution in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal. This biennial fellowship will run for three iterations, with two more to follow in 2023 and 2025, and is linked to the institution’s Living Land Acknowledgment project.
Combining art-based research, archaeological and historical maps, and oral narratives, Ange Loft’s installation engages with the land upon which the city has been built. The installation invites everyone to participate and help ponder archaeological evidence, contemporary Indigenous presence, and relationality. Visitors can generate their own land-based narratives through storytelling, graphic notetaking, place naming, and place making.
“One site located in Montréal’s downtown core, named ‘the Dawson site’ by settler archaeologists, provides a glimpse into life across the region before European contact. I propose a cheeky, purely fabricated, Iroquoian Ancestral Architectural Aesthetic by activating pattern work on Iroquois pottery shards and archaeological artifacts found at the Dawson site. The installation frames viewpoints of the built environment, co-opting form and re-infusing it with regional Indigenous visual flair,” says Loft. “These new whimsies—soft fabric shapes—look through settler architectural forms to turn our attention to the longstanding importance of Indigenous placemaking in visual iconography, naming, and memory keeping.”
Visibly Iroquoian coincides with the publication of Carrying Our Bones, a conversation between Ange Loft and urban archaeologist Katsi’tsahèn:te Cross-Delisle, on a topic that bears heavily on the architectural field: the responsibility we share around caring for ancestral remains.
The indoor and outdoor installation is on view through December 23, 2023.
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