Mootookakio’ssin: creating in spacetime

Organized by Josephine Mills and Migueltzinta Solis. Participating Artists: Helen Robertson, Ian Dawson, Compound 13 Lab, Esi Eshun, Mame Afua Mensah, Rihanata Bigey, Dawn Codex, Louisa Minkin, Michael Curran, Joseph Walsh, Adanma Nwankwo, Joseph Ijoyemi, Rabiya Nagi, Charles Nyiha, Deserae Tailfeathers, Darby Herman, Alyssa Gault, Ang Crandell, Christina Douvis, Haley Platt, Isabel Nielson, Kathy Medicine Crane, Michaela Kozak, Myah Sluik, Tatiana Weasel Moccasion, Walker English, Zoe Buckskin Mootookakio’ssin: Creating in Spacetime bridges gaps between historical cultural material housed in museums and contemporary art practice. For the past few years, UK artists Louisa Minkin and Ian Dawson have been working together with Blackfoot Elders, artists, scholars, and museum professionals living on Blackfoot Territory, talking, and thinking about material culture, cultural capital, power, and estrangement. During this time they visited with historical cultural material in museum collections, survived the pandemic, jumped time zones, and calibrated calendars to make connections. The group sought to be guided by the Blackfoot principle to responsibly share and to care for knowledge, teaching and learning. Mootookakio’ssin: Creating in Spacetime is an outcome of the collaborations that have occurred during the aforementioned research and as such it is an exhibition as process, an exhibition that experiments with what an art gallery can be, and whom it serves. Students enrolled in Indigenous Art Studio (Fall 2023) at the University of Lethbridge created their works in the gallery space, transforming the gallery into a Collective Studio. Over several weeks of discussion, self-reflection, study, and consultation, Indigenous Art Studio students chose projects that were personally meaningful to them. Critique of museum practices, healing from generational trauma, reimagining of culturally important stories and materials, the search for comfort and interactivity in the art gallery: these among others are topics which the Indigenous Art Studio classroom has taken on in this exhibition. While these themes are not always easy to engage with, it is the hope that by creating in spacetime around these stories, we can bring knowledge and healing to our many communities. Students expanded their project ideas from this with the support of the Gallery staff , the show was also open to the public during the installation period and people were invited to drop by, have some mint tea, and visit with the artists. Mootookakio’ssin: Creating in Spacetime is an exhibition as conversation. Artworks from UK artists who had contributed to the project are presented as well as recent graduates from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London, and Winchester School of Art who have been working together on the Prisoners of Love project. Prisoners of Love: Affect, containment and alternative futures aims to connect UK museum collection items with their trans-national home peoples and bring emerging artists from diasporic communities in the UK, curators, and researchers into conversation, to work responsively with complex histories and material practices. The group have been working with the Economic Botany Collection and the Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew, Horniman Museum and Gardens and Compound 13 Lab in Mumbai, India; Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford and the Department of Archaeology at the University of Ghana in Accra; Hastings Museum and Art Gallery and the Mootookakio’ssin project on Blackfoot homelands at the University of Lethbridge. The travelling works shown here were also put together during the OST project; a residency in a derelict bank in the heart of the City of London in September, 2023.

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