Enacting Emancipation

Although I am in Ramallah I wanted to post this Toronto exhibition for anyone who may be in that area. This show is very dear to me because it brings together the indigenous peoples of Palestine and North America. The opening is June 28th so please drop by if you live there. We will be doing a panel - I am going to be speaking live from Ramallah on that same day.

James Luna, Apparitions, 2008

http://www.aspacegallery.org/programming.html

When engaging with the similarity of colonial oppression between the Indigenous peoples of North America and Palestine, the late Edward Said stated that the task at hand was 'to universalize the crisis, to give greater human scope to what a particular race or nation suffered, to associate that experience with the suffering of others.' Enacting Emancipation was born from this intention.

This study of the interconnectedness of the First Nations and Palestinian experience was inspired by the sixtieth-year memorial of the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe of 1948). The exhibition unravels a universal and international system of colonial technique and strategy, while remaining fully cognizant of the dangers in homogenizing resistant cultures. The curators sought contrast in defining strategies of resistance, which elucidated the fact that the differences of defense were culturally based and inheritably Indigenous.

Together the artists in this exhibition - James Luna, Emily Jacir, Erica Lord, and John Halaka - signify the individualized experiences of Fourth World peoples who have been stripped of context, denied distinction, and disenfranchised from traditional territories. Together they present an immediacy of need in defending land and citizenry, the recognition of sovereignty, and their personal engagements in the quest for freedom.