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Major Mayflower 400 Commemoration Native American project goes digital
13th October 2020
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, ‘Settlement’ - originally scheduled as a month-long artist encampment in Central Park, Plymouth as part Mayflower 400 commemorations will now become a digital based programme. Featuring art, performance, discussion and social interaction from 29 key artists Indigenous to North America and the Pacific, Settlement will launch online from 13 October 2020.
The Settlement website will showcase creative works that question the impacts of colonisation on a wide number of tribal nations who continue to thrive despite the long-term effects of this history and will respond to the previously untold side of the Mayflower’s history.
Running for 28 weeks across the winter, Settlement will also offer open artist submissions. Through the lens of the artist, Settlement facilitates an honest representation of complex living Indigenous cultures and allows the artists complete control to explore the effects of the colonisation on North America from a Native American perspective.
The first platform of its kind to hand over creative expression, Settlement has been developed by concept artist Cannupa Hanska Luger and Plymouth based CIC The Conscious Sisters.
The multi-disciplinary arts program sees artists investigate and interpret their lives as the survivors of colonialism and encourage a greater understanding of the contemporary Native American experience.
Cannupa Hanska Luger, Settlement concept artist, says: “With Settlement moving into an online digital occupation we share diverse, evolving and present experiences of our Indigenous communities from North America and into the Pacific. Through innovative media approaches of idea sharing, our art practices can reach a global audience. This digital occupation is a space to map our stories, on our terms in a landscape unhindered by borders.”
The first open submission that will launch alongside the Settlement platform is the ‘Each/Other’ project to be exhibited at Denver Art Museum from May 23-August 22, 2021. The public are asked to embroider a message onto a bandana which artists Cannupa Hanska Luger and Marie Watt will incorporate into a large scale sculpture for the Each/Other exhibition at the Denver Art Museum.
The Each/Other project asks what would the world look like if, as humans, we thought of ourselves as companion species? Can acts of creative collaboration help heal broken bonds with the environment and each other? Artists Cannupa Hanska Luger and Marie Watt invite the public to consider questions while contributing to the physical manifestation of a large-scale sculptural installation.
Through national and international participation, the artwork will become a temporary monument to collective relationships and collaborative handwork, bringing audiences into a tactile encounter with critically relevant issues of protection, shelter, reciprocity, sustenance, exchange, power, action, stewardship, wildness, kinship, vulnerability, and ferocity.
Embroidered bandanas are needed by 01 December, 2020 and the public are asked to:
- Acquire a bandana or a piece of repurposed fabric roughly the size of a bandana
- Fold bandana/fabric corner to corner to create a triangle
- Embroider/stitch text, imagery or any other visual sentiment onto a corner portion of the fabric
- Ship to the artists at this address:
Camp Colton
℅ Each/Other
30088 S Camp Colton Dr
Colton, OR 97017
Discover more about Each/Other in this artist film featuring Cannupa Hanska Luger and Marie Watt
Settlement is supported by Arts Council England through National Lottery Project Grants and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport through the Cultural Development Fund and through the American organization, A Blade of Grass.
Discover ‘Settlement’ online from 13 October. For full information visit mayflower400uk.org/settlement