Vancouver Biennale - Threads Through Time and Weaving Cultural Identities
The Vancouver Biennale’s “Weaving Cultural Identities: Threads Through Time” will be exhibited as part of BACA 2020-- The Biennale d’art contemporain autochtone (BACA) / Contemporary Native Art Biennial at Art Mur, Montreal QC. The exhibition features 5 large weavings by 6 renowned Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh weavers, surrounded by a large Jaquard-woven border, featuring a poem by Muslim Poet Efemeral.
As an extension of its first phase “Weaving Cultural Identities: Threads Through Time” invited Indigenous and multi-ethnic weavers to engage in conversations about colonization and subsequent demarcations of unceded lands.
Through these reflections weavers created five weavings, channeling their experience of land through the voices of their ancestors. Inspired by this dialogue and in honoring these experiences, a team of Jacquard weavers and a designer created a large border to hold these weavings together, culminating in a 31 by 15 feet rug. Along the border a poem woven in Arabic reflects the weavers’ acknowledgment and respect to Muslim migrant experiences.
The Weaving Cultural Identities project is a multipart project by the Vancouver Biennale that brings together Indigenous and Islamic communities in a collaborative exploration of weaving traditions and histories. It was inspired by Saudi Arabian artist, Ajlan Gharem’s public installation Paradise Has Many Gates, a chain-link mosque installed in Sen̓áḵw – Vanier Park, Vancouver BC as part of the 2018-2020 Vancouver Biennale curatorial theme: re-IMAGE-n. By reimagining Vancouver’s Indigenous and migrant communities’ loss of identity and sacred traditions through displacement, we can work towards reintroducing traditional practices that reflect spiritual healing and cultural restoration.