Curating Sacred Spaces: The 2024 Cedar Island Residency
Artistic work that’s been a part of the Kick & Push Festival for several years now, the Cedar Island Residency returns for 2024 and this year’s creations will be shared today. By collaborating with Parks Canada to make this residency possible, the work on Cedar Island began just under one week ago on August 12th. With a busy past few days of creation, myself and B. Solomon—a creator in the Cedar Island Residency—took a non-traditional approach to interviews, sending voice memos to one another asynchronously.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
What is the Cedar Island Residency?
To be honest, I’m not even 100% sure how it came to be. I know it came about in those off years that we had—the panda [pandemic]. I’m not sure exactly what motivated or began the relationship for [Artistic Producer Liam Karry] to push towards this relationship with Parks Canada. I know that after Liam established this relationship, he did immediately find within his network Indigenous artists to take over looking after what could happen on the island, and he went with Waawaate Fobister who had previously presented their work in Kick & Push Festival and had a relationship with the festival. And then, Waawaate curated me to activate the island five years ago. We didn’t do anything that year, it was just a beautiful ceremony of passing over the island; he grass danced for me, we made food.
So I really started to work with the island four years ago. And we’ve made four works since then. Some of them have toured Europe, it’s been incredible. In the beginning, I created most of the work as a multi-disciplinary artist… Since then, there’s now other artists contributing. There have been in that time, other First Nations artists, mixed, mestizo Indigenous-Mexican, there have been Haudenosaunee artists—I am Ojibwe, Anishinaabe. And there have been other artists that really highlight the exciting tapestry of this land—Turtle Island, North America. There’ve been Jamaican-Canadian, and this year Egyptian-Canadian on the island which is also very important to me as the person curating this action.
What does Cedar Island mean to you?
Cedar Island itself and all of Kingston for that matter has so many wild themes going on for itself by virtue of its geography, its ecology, and its history. Kingston has a colourful history that we don’t really need to get into. But the island itself has one of those infamous towers on it—a corporation—which as we know is intended for defence. Defence of what? I guess we’re told in school, in defence of Canada in relation to invading Americans. The reality is when these things were built, there was no concept of Canada yet so it’s a bit of a propaganda. That War of 1812 story is kind of a half-truth. These were British corporations built to protect British North America. There was no concept of Canada yet. And actually, a very new idea of what the United States was. The United States was really just in its infancy and without really a clear idea of what it was yet… Having one of these things is having a really off bit of architecture left from that time of conquest…
Beyond that, the really odd colonial history of this region, we have found all of the settler people who live in this region to be, maybe even, healing this action. We felt incredible love and generosity and a spirit of exploration and creation from everyone we’ve encountered in this region. Kingston is an unsung jewel, truly, of this province and of the country. Me and my collaborators all truly, truly mean that when we say that. We’ve also had individual experiences in Kingston outside of this festival and it’s all felt that way.
The island sits at the end of that thousand island system, or at the beginning depending on how you look at it; it’s the end or the beginning of the Great Lakes moving in the east direction over here and that feels incredibly special, very sacred. I’m born on the top of Lake Huron, Georgian Bay, the beginning of the North Shore as that part of the Great Lakes turns into Lake Superior, so I feel very personally connected to the Great Lakes and this feels like a very sacred part of it. The island is filled with a very rich mix of deciduous and coniferous trees, some of them old growth, because there hasn’t been much development on the island. It’s incredibly eco-diverse, the amount of animals that live on this little island will blow your mind.
So the island, where it sits, the waters that surround it feel incredibly sacred, an incredible specimen to be situated so close to an urban centre. It’s incredibly magical, and really speaks to my Anishinaabe heart and all of our human hearts who encounter this land.
Are there any other lovely people collaborating on this project?
This year, a longtime collaborator and great friend of mine, Mariana Medellin, a mixed mestiza, mixed Indigenous Mexican-Canadian will be creating an incredibly evocative work in a location on the island. She is a choreographer, dancer, street artist, interartist as well, interdisciplinary, so we’ve vibed with each other in that way for many years, and she’s activating a site on the island, working with some themes she’s been working with for a while. And it’s a really exciting treat. It’s a really wild flavour that sits in contrast to the other work that you will see here.
I will be leaning into my installation background as well, and creating a work nestled in a corner of the island with a little bit of multimedia at play as well, and those two works will hopefully work against each other and work with each other in a very complementary way. Between them this year, when you come over, you’ll get a little bit more of a tour of the island, you’ll get to see a little bit more of it and feel a little bit more of the themes I’ve spoke about—the ecology and the colonial history.
We have a special fire keeper with us, who is Julie Ali. And she will be holding onto that sacred role of keeping the fire burning and keeping our sacred elements safe while we leave our fire to do our work. You will get a chance to meet her, see some of her works. She works with a lot of medicines, a lot of different apothecary products, and a lot of different spiritual traditions that she calls upon in her incredible history, and an incredible story of coming to this land—Turtle Island—as a new Egyptian-Canadian, and we’ll all get a chance at that moment to sit around and reflect on what we’ve experienced before you take this beautiful journey back to the mainland.
Is there anything I haven’t asked that you’d like to tell me?
We are activating the island a little bit differently this year, getting into different corners of it, and audience members will get to see a little bit more of the bones of the island, but it is a super special, sacred chunk of land sharing that’s right here in beautiful Kingston and what is a gorgeous bit of nibi, our sacred water… But this work that we create truly touches the rest of the world in our practices yearly as we’ve been coming here and working, and the different artists that have come through here over the years and we’re excited… And are incredibly grateful to the whole community of Kingston and of course the Kick & Push Festival for being so innovative and so—just having a spirit of exploration, truly. The fundamentals of being artists and storytellers are embodied in this festival and we feel very grateful to be called into that. Thank you so much.
The 2024 Kick & Push Festival’s Cedar Island Residency has two showings today, August 16, 2024 at 4PM and 7PM. Find more information here. Find more information about Parks Canada here.
