inter-being by wyïśya as part of MONTRÉAL MONOCHROME VI: SANCTUARY CITY?
free
inter-being is the inhabited deep sea-space of a relational-creature.
A goult coralis sculpture praying to interdependence.
By the clownesque gruesome, we invite humans to relax in
the observation of a timeless and laughable dance, honest and failing.
Through this act of enlarged-embodiment and grace, we continue to
touch the ancient knots of oppression which represent the karmic ripples of life in torments.
Shahir Omar-Qrishnaswamy is a multi-disciplinary artist currently facilitating meditation, dance, and singing workshops for newly arrived refugee youth. In this life, Shahir is a diasporic, queer trans person of South Asian descent who grew up between Mississauga and Malawi. She has an honours degree in Film and Cultural Studies from McGill University. Her creative philosophies are rooted in the Dhamma (Vipassana meditation), animism, and compassionate eco-social justice.
Wyï is a multidisciplinary, non-emerging artist who practices presence through meditation, dance, crochet sculpture, and conscious breathing. Wyï’s philosophies are rooted in traditions of animism, which she touches through embodied rituals. She draws from an ethic of benevolence as motivation to move. In this life, Wyï is a pangender human, born in a colonial French-Québécois cultural context. She descends from fluvial and sylvan ancestors, as well as relatives of Western, Iberian and Scandinavian Europe. She is born on the shores North of the island of Tio’tia:ke / Montréal, where she currently resides, on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory.
Montréal Monochrome is an annual event which aims to address the mis- and under-representation and systemic oppression of marginalized groups in Montréal’s contemporary art milieu. The event works toward imagining and nurturing new and existing bonds, solidarities and friendships between Indigenous artists, thinkers and cultural workers and their racialized allies. This sixth edition of Montréal Monochrome wishes to explore the different meanings and socio-political ramifications that the concept of “sanctuary city” includes or suggests, especially if it is used to speak to notions of an unceded Indigenous territory. What does the city of “Montréal” represent for its inhabitants? A land of opportunity or the continuation of a colonial project? If not a sanctuary for its inhabitants, how can the city generate its own safe spaces? How do people belonging to marginalized communities develop their own survival strategies, self-protection, and self-care? The projects of this sixth edition speak to themes of sanctuary city, the sacred, the colonial project of Canada, and the right of peoples to self-determination.
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articule thanks our partner Programme Montréal Interculturel (PMI).