• 001 Vigil. The Land Remembers Art
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Julia Rose Sutherland

Vigil: The Land Remembers (Performance stills) 2020 #1

Vigil: The Land Remembers (Performance stills) 2020 #1

$1,850.00 CAD
$1,850.00 CAD
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Julia Rose Sutherland is a Mi’kmaq (Metepenagiag Nation) / settler artist and educator (Assistant Professor at OCADU) based out of Tkaronto (Toronto, Canada). Sutherland’s interdisciplinary art practice employs photography, sculpture, textiles, and performance. She earned her MFA at the University at Buffalo (2019) and BFA in Craft and New Media at the Alberta University of the Arts (2013). She has exhibited nationally and internationally, recently showing work at the Bemis Center of Contemporary Art, the Mackenzie Art Gallery, K Art Gallery, WAAP Gallery, and 59 Rivoli Gallery in Paris, France. Sutherland is a recent recipient of the Canada Council for the Arts Creating Knowing Sharing award and the AFA Indigenous Individual Project grant.

Vigil is a large-format printed work from a performance series titled "Vigil: The Land Remembers (Performance stills) 2020"  Epson: Ultrachrome Pigment Inks on Lexjet Archival Matte Paper. 26 X 38 " White frame optional. There are several in the series that can be hung together. 

The work shown is part of documentation still from  Julia Rose Sutherland's performance piece, Vigil: The Land Remembers, which was part of K Art's newest exhibition, 'Brought to Light'. Sutherland performed this piece at Silo City in Buffalo, NY, to raise public awareness on the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women in North America.

This ongoing performance series consists of Sutherland pouring 155 pounds of cement (an adult woman's average weight in Canada)  into a hole/dip in the landscape that had collected water. She was interested in using the natural landscape, and in this documentation, it existed at Silo City in Buffalo, NY. Using this puddle now reformed into a new form.  She wanted it to resemble an unmarked gravesite.
Sutherland used this site to host interventions of giving remembrance, gratitude, and awareness to the public about the epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous women in North America. She invited the public to join in her smudging, giving thanks, and open discussions about these important subjects. Instead of functioning as a lecture space, Sutherland wanted to foster a respectful memorial and honest, open, and genuine discussion platform. Most importantly, it is a space to respect and homage to these women.

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