Skawennati

de Skawennati Tricia Fragnito, Matthew Ryan Smith, Wahsontiio Cross, Helen Gregory, Maize Longboat

"In Skawennati's experience, the setting of the creation story, Sky World, has always been depicted as Terran, pre-contact, Iroquoia, with people living in wooden longhouses, wearing clothing made from animal hides, and using clay pots. Skawennati wants to imagine Sky World as another planet, a sustainable, peaceful, and technically-advanced society. Curated by Matthew Ryan Smith, the exhibition From Sky World to Cyberspace gathers a number of Skawennati's works which, together, trace a line from our place of origin somewhere in the heavens to the virtual realm, one of the newest territories on Earth. This line sometimes curves, sometimes becomes invisible, but along it are Onkwehonwe--Indigenous people--alive and kicking. These works are also a result of Skawennati's continuous investigation of cultural construction, contemporary Indigenous self-representation in cyberspace, and of our growing relationships with the digital world."