Eve Smart Gallery :
SEPTEMBER 26 – OCTOBER 27, 2024
JESSICA SILVEY & MIYUKI SHINKAI | Echo from the Ancestral Land – Past and Present
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 28th, 2pm – 4pm
Since the last project in 2014 ‘Mind over Matter’ that Jessica Silvey and Miyuki Shinkai worked on together, they see themselves shifting from their art and craft making to mentoring and teaching community members about how we can engage inner selves and embrace spiritual growth through the creative learning process. Engaging with younger generations to pass their knowledge on has been a focus of their life work. Silvey and Shinkai are conscientiously walking on the path to truth and reconciliation to create unity in the community. Both feel that they are in a strong position to take a leadership role in passing their Indigenous/traditional cultural perspectives and wisdom from ancestral knowledge to the next generations.
Echo from the Ancestral Land – past and present focuses on meaningful encounters and being part of a learning opportunity for viewers. Shinkai and Silvey aim to intrigue viewers, encouraging them to engage and take a moment to think about the past and modernization of the world, what we lost and what we became, how we got here, and what we left behind. They showcase objects of daily life such as bowls, needles, clothing and medicines, which reflect on their own traditional preciousness, uniqueness and connection to nature versus modern convenience, materialism, consumerism, and industrialization. Echo from the Ancestral Land – Past and Present also features weavings. In the last 15 years, Coast Salish communities have seen a revival in Salish weaving and cedar bark weaving. Young children to elders are weaving and connecting to their culture. – We cannot change the past, but we can heal from it, and we can choose how to weave our future. Also highlighted is indigenous language revitalization, through the creation of a Japanese calligraphy backdrop with the same message written in Japanese, shíshálh (Sechelt) language and an English translation. This message reflects on our connection to our land and roots; “we are nature”
Check out our YouTube channel for a video of this exhibition.