LAND: anti-colonial art practices, indigenizing dominate culture - Pt. II
Tuesday, October 21 Timebuddy
United States: 10am HDT, 1pm PDT, 2pm MDT, 3pm CDT, 4pm EDT
Europe: 21:00 BST
Australia: Wednesday, October 22, 6:00am AEST
Wendy DesChene
Eliza Evans
Sarah Kanouse
This fall we are exploring through a series of dialogues, with our members and guest speakers, how a movement of indigenizing dominate culture can encourage a greater balance between humans and the more-than-human world.
This month we will hear from Eliza Evans, who will discuss her series LANDMAN, created to mobilizes mineral rights owners to resist drilling and rematriate lands, and Sarah Knouse, who will present NATIVE SPACES, a digital platform for sharing artful, place-based audio narratives of Indigenous survival.
Artist and Indigenous culture bearer Wendy DesChene (Métis), will act as a respondent, and share her painting practice focused on reclamation, then together we will explore how Indigeous knowledge can inform art practices, as well as contribute to a movement of indigenizing dominate culture.
Each presenter will have approximately 15 minutes to discuss their work, then 15 minutes of response, with audience participation following.
Member respondent
"Métis artist Wendy DesChene holds an MFA from Tyler School of Art and investigates identity and environment through installation, performance, painting, and sculpture. Her practice foregrounds the land as both an ecological system and a repository of cultural memory, addressing climate change, biodiversity loss, and the intertwined legacies of colonization and displacement. With Jeff Schmuki, she co-founded PlantBot, a participatory eco-project supported by the NEA and Pulitzer Foundation, which has been presented internationally at venues including the Carnegie Museum, Goethe Institute, and Marfa Dialogues. Her recent paintings, which premiered at UNC Chapel Hill, reclaim Indigenous connections to land and ecology while expanding visual languages of environmental care. DesChene has completed over twenty international residencies and is Professor of Art at Auburn University." wendydeschene.ca
Member presenters
Eliza Evans is an artist and researcher working at the intersection of climate justice, property law, and speculative finance. She transforms legal and bureaucratic systems into tools of resistance, using contracts, mineral rights, and litigation as sculptural and participatory media. In 2020, she launched All the Way to Hell, distributing fractional mineral rights to block fossil fuel extraction. That work evolved into Landman for the Planet, which mobilizes mineral rights owners to resist drilling and rematriate land. Her projects have been recognized as a 2024 Climate Leader by Grist, supported by the Curb Center at Vanderbilt University, and featured at institutions including the New Museum/NEW INC DEMO Festival, Carnegie Museum of Art, Bronx Museum, and Missoula Art Museum. Her projects have appeared in The New York Times, Art in America, Hyperallergic, and The Brooklyn Rail. She holds degrees from Oberlin College (BA) the University of Texas at Austin (PhD), and SUNY Purchase (MFA). landmanfortheplanet.com
Sarah Kanouse (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist and writer examining the political ecology of landscape and space. Migrating between video, sound, and performance, her expanded nonfiction media projects shift the visual dimension of landscape to allow hidden stories of environmental and social transformation to emerge. Her solo and collaborative creative work—most notably with Compass and the National Toxic Land/Labor Conservation Service—has been presented through the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Documenta 13, the Museum of Contemporary Art-Chicago, Krannert Art Museum, Cooper Union, Smart Museum, and numerous academic and artist-run venues. Her writings on landscape, ecology and contemporary art have appeared in Acme, Leonardo, Parallax, and Art Journal and numerous edited volumes. A 2019-2020 fellow at the Rachel Carson Center at Ludwig Maximilians Universität, she is Associate Professor of Media Arts in the Department of Art + Design at Northeastern University. readysubjects.org
This event is free for members + one guest. $5 for non-members. All participants MUST REGISTER.
