The Earth Is My Elder, running now at Open Space, starts before you even enter the gallery. The poetry of artist Krista Arias is stencilled in neon pink on the pillars out front of the gallery, her voice carrying from speakers over the din of the street, and the second-story windows full with the vibrant colours of her films.
“I feel like [because of COVID-19] a lot of people still don’t feel comfortable going into spaces for very long, or going into a gallery space,” says curator Toby Lawrence. “So by bringing some elements outside, even though they’re very different in their format and different in the way that you would experience them, it still allows for the engaged space to exist outside of the gallery.”
Arias’ video poetry is both enveloping and arresting; the films are projected in intervals on the expansive walls of the gallery, chairs set before each and the lighting low. The warm colours featured so prominently in Arias’ work are echoed elsewhere—the pink for the exterior poetry is pulled from the rose petals in “Xochiquetzal’s Bed” and the vivid title wall draws inspiration from the cempasúchil flowers featured in Eating Our Ancestors.
“What I’m trying to do is highlight the works themselves by supporting them with colourations that occur within those works, and that sort of fits within the philosophy of the work Krista is doing,” says Lawrence. “So her and I spent a long time talking about colour, about the colour for the title wall, about the colour for the exterior painting.”
Arias lives in New Mexico; due to COVID-19 restrictions and guidelines, she was unable to come up to set up the show, so Lawrence worked closely with her to design the space how she would want this body of work presented.
“The idea was to have it be a warm, immersive space with low light, a space that’s calming,” says Lawrence. “The spacing between the video poems is intentional, so there’s space for folks to reflect or recompose themselves or gather their thoughts before the next video poem begins.”
A small flicker guides gallery-goers to the next presentation, which explore the complexities of reconnection, of decolonization, and of relation.
“There’s so much depth in Krista’s work and it really is working through these interconnected ideas of identity and trauma and motherhood and the theoretical investigations that she’s been engaged in, throughout her research but also throughout her life,” says Lawrence. “For Krista, essentially, her work is ceremony and those elements—like art and ceremony and life—are not necessarily separate.”
Arias’ work is rooted in concepts like food sovereignty, earth-based medicines, and a reconnection to one’s ancestors
“Her and her family have a farm in New Mexico and they very much live a life that is focused around food sustainability and food security and providing a space for healing and working through each person’s ancestral relationships,” says Lawrence. “All of those elements that operate in her life are very much influencing this work, and I think it’s both a deeply personal and deeply significant body of work that I’m so excited to be able to bring to the Victoria arts community though my relationship to her, and to be able to bring into the broader discourse of contemporary art.”
The Earth is My Elder
Until Saturday, May 29
Free, Open Space
openspace.ca