Her Signal Skin
Bright flash, fluorescent color warning; look here.
Caution signal, phosphors dance excitation,
waltz with lightening currents, taste of mercury.
I am reminded.
We are living on an altered spectrum.
Beautiful and dangerous.
Vests worn by miners deep in the dark, reflect only
false light that strikes them as they toil,
extract coal tar to make the pulsating, tainted dyes.
Skin.
Skin of the four-legged,
skin of The Mother, my skin.
When did we all become just things?
Home is not a printed label, flattened symbols pressed to paper.
Here, there is no false notion of ownership, only those who belong.
Elmastukwek is
a voice that speaks river and forest,
a windy hand that strokes grassland and meadow,
a sky that sings to the sea.
Home is the sound of being Grass Pink and Rose Pogonia,
Marsh Leopard, whose colors beam a
brilliance that calls each of us.
We honor the four-legged, as always, respect their gifts.
A rabbit in a cage has
no kin but enemies and executioners,
no life but to await machine death,
no meaning but the false value of commodity.
The way forward will be what it has always been; to continue.
Our tracks still weave a path through the ever thinning snow
— Mihku Paul
Info
Artwork Information
[re]claim: Elmastukwek, of the [re]claim series, Meagan Musseau, appliqué beadwork on commercially tanned and dyed rabbit fur of the Mi’kmawplace name for Bay of Islands, Newfoundland, 12″x17″, 2018.
Not for sale.
Informations sur l'oeuvre
[re]claim: Elmastukwek, de la série [re]claim, Meagan Musseau, broderie perlée appliquée sur fourrure de lapin tannée et teinte commercialement du nom Mi’kmawplace pour Bay of Islands, Terre-Neuve, 12″x17″, 2018.
Pas à vendre.
Artist Statement
Elmastukwek is the landscape I am from. A coastal inlet opens into an expansive river valley on the west coast of Ktaqmkuk, also known as Newfoundland. The [re]claim series (2017-ongoing) focuses on materializing Mi’kmaw descriptions of place through beading the language on commercially tanned and synthetically dyed rabbit fur. [re]claim: Elmastukwek illustrates a form of adaptation by utilizing new materials to continue Indigenous ways of making.
— Meagan Musseau
Démarche de l’artiste
Elmastukwek est le paysage qui m’a vu naître. Un bras de mer côtier s’ouvre sur une grande vallée fluviale sur la côte ouest de Ktaqmkuk, également connue sous le nom de Terre-Neuve. La série
[re]claim (de 2017 à maintenant) se concentre sur la matérialisation des descriptions mi’kmaq du lieu par l’entremise du perlage de mots en langue mik’maq sur de la fourrure de lapin tannée commercialement et teinte synthétiquement.
[re]claim: Elmastukwek illustre une forme d’adaptation en ce qu’elle utilise de nouveaux matériaux pour perpétuer les modes de fabrication autochtones.
— Meagan Musseau
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