Wind’s Damp Song for the Soil + Other Contemplations on Ecological Justice
Responding to the entanglements of colonialism + the climate crisis by inviting more-than-human capacities to direct our attention to livable futures.
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Land-based Textile Artist
Alana McLeod is an artist of Cree, Ojibway, Metis and European ancestry. She has exhibited work widely, including at imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival and Gallery 44 in Toronto. Alana grew up in Northern Ontario and works with images and textures together with ecological materials. She studied Photography and Textile Design at Sheridan College. Alana also has a Master’s degree in Expressive Arts Therapy from The European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. Integral to her art are ideas around wellness, both in materials and content.
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Community-engaged Textile Artist
Sophie LeBlanc is a Franco-Ontarian artist with a design and philosophy background that runs Chemistry + Craft, dedicated to ecological textile practices. She deeply contemplates and integrates the life cycles of materials. LeBlanc handcrafts minimalist slow fashion goods with natural materials and local supplies, in collaboration with diverse community-engaged programs, as well as with regional and international artists and craftspeople.
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Diving Loon Artist
Jayden Ode’imin is Anishinaabe with maternal ties to Birch Island (Whitefish River First Nation), and runs Diving Loon Goods. She makes handmade wearable art as an Anishinaabe and Filipina self-taught beadwork artist. Jay's beadwork journey has been incredibly healing and provokes healing for those that engage with her art. Along with being a bead-based artist, Jayden creates media art and is a social media wiz.
Among the Red Pines, Maple + Oak
Alana McLeod’s assemblages of silk, cotton + linen dyed with a spectrum of plant + mineral pigments from goldenrod, sumac + curly dock to rusted metal cans, were suspended from the trees for over 30 days at Manidoo Bineshii Dreams.
Greenhouse Boreal
Sophie LeBlanc’s ecoprinted installation is embedded both in the plants of the boreal including dogwood, bunchberry + sweet fern + also with many hands - across generations that attended her community-engaged ecoprinting workshops. LeBlanc, with a longstanding relationship to Manidoo Bineshii Dreams, namely where she learned how to ecoprint, has decided to leave her installation up indefinitely to see how it transforms over the seasons.
Jayden Ode’imin’s meditations led them to contemplate what the spirits of the forest might want to experience. These other-than-human forces were invited through gathering found + prepared natural materials to generate living architecture + birch prayer flags.
Little People
Wind’s Damp Song for the Soil + Other Contemplations on Ecological Justice
Dedicated to the exchange of ecoart practices in Northern Ontario, this exhibition is co-curated by Manidoo Bineshiinh + Elyse Portal
Manidoo Bineshiinh + Elyse Portal came to know each other through art + plant encounters facilitated at Manidoo Bineshii Dreams, including ecoprinting + plant identification in Anishinaabemowin, where participants painted diverse names connected to each plant.
Ecoart workshop for artists
As part of the early creative process, artists and curators met at Manidoo Bineshii Dreams to connect with the gardens, plant pigments, + boreal forest. A visualization welcomed personal connections + insights related to the land. Demonstrations of diverse ecomaterials were offered. Each artist was given natural botanical lake pigments (tansy, purple cabbage) as well as local soil pigment + commercial natural mineral hues, along with plant-based binders. Artists were invited to experiment with these materials + then walked the food sovereignty site to consider where they might want to respond with their art practice.
Mural at MBD: Raven Debassige, music: Jeff Kaale
Manidoo Bineshiinh
Manidoo Bineshiinh ndigo Maang dodem is of the Three Fires Confederacy from the traditional territory of the Atikameksheng Anishnawbek and Unceded Territory of Wiikwemkoong (Manitoulin Island).
Their mother, grandmothers + great grandmothers opened up pathways to revitalise ancestral culture through land-based perspectives, skills and arts. Their father, grandfathers + great grandfathers, were advocates for Land and Water. As the knowledge of their culture expanded it entered into contemporary creations devoted to long ago traditions, including jewellery and textile art featured in critical films such as Indian Horse.
Connecting with Anishinaabemowin has provided an ecological way of seeing the world and a process of healing intergenerational traumas. Relationships to land, water, plants, pigments + care are embedded into their food sovereignty and collective arts project, Manidoo Bineshii Dreams (MBD). Their goal with MBD is to bring diverse people together from all Nations, including Indigenous, Black, People Of Colour, Newcomers, non-Indigenous, and 2SLGBTQI+ to connect through diverse art practices about truth and reconciliation and the climate crisis, so that we can face these times with greater resilience.
Elyse Portal
Elyse is an ecological artist with a particular interest in botanical + mineral pigments. She has a master’s degree in Visual Studies from the University of Toronto. While at UofT, she taught studio arts + worked as a researcher and teaching assistant within the School of the Environment. In a curatorial capacity, she has contributed to shows such as Greenw**sh, at Open Space Arts Society, Victoria, BC (2011). Greenw**sh spoke to the anxieties of the warming planet through beauty, aliveness, humour, poetics, wisdom, challenge and community engagement. She curated Ingirrajut Isumaginnguaqtaminnut: Journey into Fantasy, at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection (2015). “Cultural health is the core element of this knowledge,” is how the exhibition was described by professor Anna Hudson, Lead Researcher for Mobilizing Inuit Cultural Heritage, at York University. Recently, as a board member for Myths and Mirrors, Elyse co-authored an awarded tri-agency federal grant, for community-engaged artists to nurture resilience within vulnerable communities
We would like to acknowledge the funding support from the Ontario Arts Council
