"Gemini is a performance that expresses archetypal aspects of human personality. Bringing subconscious material into fruition through performative gestures and actions. Using land environment and indigenous expressions of culture, through drum, song, ritual. This piece came forward after a wind storm had knocked down a tree in my backyard. I started to use the wood to help inform the actions. I began interpreting this experience as an offering and thinking about the gratitude we must not forget for Mother nature. Creating from change while transmuting cathartic gestures for the purpose of raising awareness is the purpose of creating Gemini. Self-awareness of my strengths and weaknesses, becoming humble and praying for insight. Gemini urges one to look deeper into their origin story, birthplace and relationship to cosmology. Creating this self-reflective piece has expanded my appreciation and gifts I have for myself, others and the land." - LD

Soundtrack: John Trudell, “The Earth was the Mother” and Alanis Obamsawin, “Bush Lady”
Video documentation: Eli Hirtle

co-hosted by the Toronto Biennial of Art, OCAD U Graduate Studies and BUSH Gallery with support by ubc okanagan 

gemini

ARTIST: Lindsay Katsitsakatste Delaronde
CURATOR: TOBY LAWRENCE, presented by bush gallery 

It is a common refrain of late to talk of being in ‘unprecedented times,’ which leads to the key question of this residency: what precedents do we want to set for our collective futures as creative thinkers working inside art, design, health, technology, and other cultural sectors? During this residency, we will explore how care plays a distinct role in our creative processes and the well-being of our communities, and will engage issues such as:

How do we create expressions of emotional and social intimacy while working in isolation?
How can traditional notions of land and indigeneity guide us in moving between virtual and physical realities?
What best practices in health care can be deployed to shape and be shaped by creative explorations?

Implicit in this project is an engagement with creative ideas at the intersections of art, health care, science and technology, and strategic design communities such as those invested in our graduate programs at OCAD U. As the response to the pandemic matures, governments and industries begin the intensive task of returning to a ‘new normal,’ and our residency will address how this can happen in ways that speak to critical issues regarding mental and social well-being, how creativity and artistic projections contribute to creating a healthy society, and reaching out to those who have been disproportionately affected and likely to continue feeling the reverberations physically, emotionally, and socioeconomically both from COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdowns.

Lindsay Katsitsakatste Delaronde is a Kanienke’haka woman from Kahnawake. For the past 13 years, she has been a grateful, active and contributing guest on Lekwungen territory, Victoria, BC. She hold a Masters degree in Fine Arts and a Master of Arts in the Indigenous Communities Counseling Psychology Program from the University of Victoria. Lindsay held the position as the first Indigenous artist in Residence from 2017-2019 and is currently the Indigenous Resurgence Coordinator for the Fine Arts Department at UVIC.

Lindsay's artistic practice focuses on Indigenous theatre, land-based/site-specific performance art, collaborative practice, cultural resurgence and social/political activism through the arts. Her artistic media include photography, performance/theatre, movement/dance and visual studio arts. As an artist over the past two years, her journey has focused on collaborative practice and collaborative performances that reflect on reconciliation as a participatory action that involves bearing Witness and observation that puts discussions of perspectives and values into action. Lindsay has sought to take a critical stand regarding how art contributes to reconciliation. She has explored reconciliation through working with non- Indigenous and Indigenous groups of people to co-create artworks that symbolized unity, integration and respect. During her Indigenous artist in residence for the city of Victoria, Lindsay created 18 diverse collaborative projects and have contributed to the larger discourse regarding decolonization in the arts, reconciliation and Indigenous art practice and protocols.