Dust was a collaborative outdoor installation project I executed as part of a course I took in the spring of 2021 titled Indigenous Land Art. The unfired “wild” clay used to create these pieces came from land in and around Regina, Saskatchewan. Participants added other locally found materials as decoration, including porcupine quills, birch bark, horse hair, northern bedstraw, natural dyes and pigments.

Participants: Sherry Farrell-Racette; Raeanne Glaude; Lorne Kequahtooway; Larissa Kitchemonia; Felicia McCallum; Esperanza Sanchez Espitia; Amy Snider; Kenneth Wilson; Kaeli Wood.

Statement:

The clay plates in Dust (2021) represent the consequences we are facing as a result of our broken relationship with the land. As we all know but often take for granted, “our corn draws life from this earth, and we draw life from our corn.” Unlike the plates that we use daily to consume our food, these are teetering on the edge of nonexistence; that they will not survive is their form and content, their fate suggesting our own. Enduring drought will be one of the worst consequences of climate change, and these pieces embody it.

Work Cited: Tuck, Eve, and Marcia McKenzie. Place in Research: Theory, Methodology, and Methods, Routledge, 2015.