Throat-singing with Taiquaa//Ambe Omaa - ayaga//babaami-ayaa

Date and Time for this Past Event

• Sunday, Jun 12, 2022  3pm - 5pm

Location

visit website

Event Category

Family Friendly

Details

Throat-singing
Taiquaa//Ambe Omaa – ayaga//babaami-ayaa (to travel around)

ayaga//babaami-ayaa (to travel around) is a series of land-based performances incorporating original compositions of Pic-eine’rkin throat-singing, textile, storytelling, and visual symbols across the Midwest. Throat-singing artistic duo Taiquaa//Ambe Omaa will travel from Rochester to Afton to Fargo in a northwest direction as a subversion of Manifest Destiny that pushed Natives past the Mississippi and beyond. It further mirrors the journey inland of Anishinaabeg from wabanaki/east coast to find the-food-that-grows-on-the-water – manoomin/wild rice – and westward Yup’ik migration from Alaska to Siberia.

Keeping with these generational traditions, artists will bring only what they can carry or pull along travois for each installation. Artists will work with site organizers and Mdewakanton Dakhóta and Wahpekute Dakhóta community members to understand the colonial and Indigenous lifeways of each site, and plan their bundles accordingly: bringing what they need to survive and thrive from the land – furs for ceremony, food and medicine baskets, bedrolls, sewing and trapping supplies, bagamaagan for protection, and seeds – to create a temporary living space at each site.

After making camp, artists will engage in an original throat singing performance with sounds inspired from regional life both in appreciation of the site and acknowledging the art form’s survival origins as many Native communities were forced to make camp and wait for government rations that would often never come, a genocide by attrition like Minnesota’s Sandy Lake Tragedy. Songs will feature collaborative composition and audience participation. Artists will then break camp, leaving the scrim and frame as a gentle reminder of presence.

Taiquaa//Ambe Omaa (nibiiwakamigkwe & Anastasia Adams) Taiquaa//Ambe Omaa (come here) is a collaboration of Yup’ik, Michif, and Anishinaabe lifeways imbued with connection to land, community, and place. Anastasia Adams (she/her) is a Yup’ik composer, vocalist, choreographer, educator, and textile artist focusing on themes of reconnection, velvet genocide, and Native joy. Utilizing her classical vocal training and oral tradition teachings, she subverts musical expectations of both Western and Native genres while prioritizing audience involvement and sense of connection to a piece. Her evolving work shifts into Indigenous science systems and their balance with Indigenous art practice. nibiiwakamigkwe (they/them/awi) is an ohkwa:lí (bear clan) Onyota’a:ka (Oneida), waabizheshi (marten clan) Anishinaabe (Ojibwe), Michif (Métis), and waabishkiiwed Two-Spirit artist and organizer working in traditional Indigenous craftwork and contemporary Woodlands style to foster awareness of land protection, Indigenous cultural landscapes, and the complexity of identity with much of their work acknowledging the integration of land sovereignty, food sovereignty, language sovereignty, and art sovereignty with all reliant upon the others for continued existence. Raised on Anishinaabewaki (northern Wisconsin), their art practice is structured to traditional land use which has branched into written and oral advocacy for varied publications and institutions. They remain committed to traditional methods of protection and care with jingle dress dancing, traditional farming, and ceremony both in practice and education. Together, nibiiwakamigkwe and Anastasia’s combined art practices re-establish Indigenous art as social practice, relying on the lands, histories and understandings of community to create and inform artistic endeavors.
This program is presented as part of 4Ground: Midwest Land Art Biennial.

4Ground: Midwest Land Art Biennial is a far-reaching initiative spanning four states of the Upper Midwest and tribal lands. In partnership with Arts Midwest and International Sculpture Center, this site-specific art festival will raise awareness around important land and water issues while celebrating the land and art of the rural Midwest. Presented and planned in collaboration with tribal organizations, nonprofits, community groups, and both the public and private sector, 4Ground is designed to uplift rural and indigenous communities.

The more than 20 sites in 4Ground will be created in collaboration with the land. Rather than perpetuating the white settler colonialist tradition of land art that seeks to control and manipulate the earth, artists’ work will be grounded in a feminist, indigenous perspective, drawing on a tradition of land art that goes back millennia on the North American continent. 4Ground will take place within the contemporary political boundaries of North and South Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin, and will include programs with some of the foremost thinkers and makers of the land art movement.

All works serve to punctuate the landscape, encouraging people to look—and ultimately see—more. Visitors will experience the Driftless Region of southwestern Wisconsin, the bluffs of the St. Croix Valley dividing Wisconsin and Minnesota, and the sprawling prairies, fertile farmland, and glacial lakes dominating most of the Upper Midwest. Virtual components will guide viewers through the history of the land and people that have inhabited it for thousands of years, highlighting some of the oldest natural land formations in the United States created by receding glaciers. Print and online materials will educate visitors about historic land art created by Native peoples, including thousands of destroyed burial mounds, that no longer exist.

Learn more about 4Ground: https://4groundbiennial.org/