Video: Stitch-Kin | An Evening of Poetry with Poet, Filmmaker, and Textile Artist melannie monoceros | Sovereign Intimacies
On November 26, 2020 at 6 pm CT Plug In ICA in partnership with Gallery 1C03 presented Stitch-Kin, an evening of poetry with poet, filmmaker, and textile artist melannie monoceros. During this evening reading with melannie monoceros, the poet shared and read from their suite of recent and older poems exploring ancestors, threadlove and lore, queer kinship, and grief. Afterward melannie answered questions and invited a brief conversation with curators and audience. This event was presented as part of Sovereign Intimacies with support from Video Pool Media Arts Centre.
Following Stitch-Kin monoceros also presented Whispers in the Weft a virtual artist talk hosted by the Manitoba Craft Council at 7:30pm CT on Thursday, November 26th!
Informed by an intentionally multi- and inter-disciplinary artistic practice, melannie monoceros stitched parallels between the work of weaving and that of memoir writing. Approaches to narrative, can, as melannie shared, be influenced by the choreography of weaving: the let off, the take up, the chain, the choke, the cross.
Offering insight into their exploration of grief and the body, melannie bought together practices of mending, (re)collecting and creating to consider the lessons wrought through the kinship of text/iles.
melannie monoceros is a poet and interdisciplinary artist exploring polysensory production and somatic grief through text/ile. Their work considers the collective qrip (queer+crip) consciousness by connecting to marvelous bodies living with complexity as sick or disabled. A Black, Taino, Arawak creator, they live in Treaty 1/Winnipeg, MB; home of the Métis First Nation and the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe, Dene, Cree, Dakota and Oji-Cree Nations. In 2019, melannie was awarded the JRG Emerging Artist Award for their continued pursuit, integrating technology and accessibility through film via their series “ancestoradio”. In 2020 melannie’s work can be found at Gallery 1C03 (University of Winnipeg) the Window Gallery (Winnipeg) and the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba (Brandon, MB).
Sovereign Intimacies was a group exhibition co-curated by Nasrin Himada and Jennifer Smith, in partnership with Gallery 1C03, with support from Video Pool Media Arts Centre. The exhibition took place at Plug In ICA from September 26 – December 20, 2020, with extensive programming that consists of online talks, workshops, screenings, and poetry readings. Sovereign Intimacies explored themes of cultural and community exchange between Indigenous artists and artists from the diaspora, more specifically artists who are First Nations, Inuit and Métis collaborating with artists living in what is currently called Canada who came to this land and are not part of the settler/colonial history of the country. The group show consisted of pairings of artists, as well as individuals, whose work is based on process and relationship building, and for those whose work is invested in active conceptualization around topics of friendship and intimacy, who are working to build collective vision of a sovereign future.