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Series:

Series: Decolonizing the Invisible: Art & SpiritGuest Editor
Sung Yung Shin
Series: Decolonizing the Invisible: Art & SpiritGuest Editor
Sung Yung Shin
Series: Decolonizing the Invisible: Art & SpiritGuest Editor
Sung Yung Shin
Series: Decolonizing the Invisible: Art & SpiritGuest Editor
Sung Yung Shin
Series: Decolonizing the Invisible: Art & SpiritGuest Editor
Sung Yung Shin
Series: Decolonizing the Invisible: Art & SpiritGuest Editor
Sung Yung Shin
Series: Decolonizing the Invisible: Art & SpiritGuest Editor
Sung Yung Shin
Series: Decolonizing the Invisible: Art & SpiritGuest Editor
Sung Yung Shin
Series: Decolonizing the Invisible: Art & SpiritGuest Editor
Sung Yung Shin
Series: Decolonizing the Invisible: Art & SpiritGuest Editor
Sung Yung Shin

In this series, Native artists and artists of color living and working in Mni Sota responded to a very open prompt asking them to respond to the question of how their artistic practice is influenced by their, and their people’s, spiritual practices and beliefs. In considering how art-making is a way of engaging with the spirit, writers conjured the words and images of indigeneity and colonization, visions and premonitions, dance, rivers, lakes, oceans, salt, shamans, callings, bodies, dreams, deaths, grief, vulnerability, genesis, destruction, and protection. Culturally-specific approaches to spirit–what animates us as human beings–and the secret lines of communication with the other-world(s), under-world(s), and after-world(s) criss cross our synapses and uphold, as an invisible architecture, our ways of creating, whether texts of words or of dance. Everything is made by the body, and the body is one home, one way station, one route of the spirit(s). A text is a body, and the word text simply means something woven. These artists generously shared their inner visions of some aspects of their relationships to their texts and how spirit cannot be separated from the living process of making art.

신 선 영 Sun Yung Shin is the award-winning author of three books of poetry, the editor/co-editor of three anthologies, and the author/co-author of two books for children. With fellow Korean immigrant poet Su Hwang, she co-directs Poetry Asylum. She is a full-time artist and cultural worker, and lives in Minneapolis with her family; more at www.sunyungshin.com.

Photo of two women draped in white fabric rolling down the stairs of Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
1Eiko Otake and Chitra Vairavan rehearsing in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine during an exhibit on the divine feminine, November 26, 2016. Photo: Wm Johnston.

Deep Listening: Creating from Memories and Speaking through Dance

Chitra Vairavan

Dancer and choreographer Chitra Vairavan offers a blueprint for the decolonized spiritual, as a movement towards reflection, presence, and memory.

Tags: decolonizationliberationlisteningprocessspirituality
Korean stone sculptures from the Joseon Dynasty, in an outdoor exhibit at the Korean Stone Art Museum. Eight light stone sculptures, in the form of human figures with hands clasped, stand in a grove of gravel, bushes, and trees.
1Photo by the author, May 2019.
Literature Performing Arts Visual Art
10-28-2020

Decolonizing the Invisible & Visible: Artists Illuminate the Potent Presence of Spirit in their Creative Practices

Sun Yung Shin
A gray hare stands on a line drawing of scaffolding, holding out a white spoon with a red cherry to a kneeling young person with tan skin, brown hair, and a pink dress. A hare with a noose around its neck sits between them. Red block letters with the word “LOVE” stand in the background, beside a snarling coyote holding a blue rooster in its mouth.
1Julie Buffalohead, The Garden, 2017, Julie and Babe Davis Acquisition Fund, 2018.
Literature
11-4-2020

Spirit Talk

Mona Susan Power
Two hands cup a white paper boat, against a background of blue fabric.
1Photo: Faiza Abubakar.
Literature Visual Art
11-23-2020

Remembering One’s Own: Answering the Call of Spirit

Anh-Hoa Thi Nguyen
Image description: Four sheets of parchment paper with burned edges, cursive and block writing, including drawings of a horse and an anatomical heart.
1Merle Geode, Untitled (channeled custom healing story for a client) (2015). Materials: India ink, permanent marker, fire, parchment.
Literature Visual Art
12-4-2020

One’s a Crowd

Merle Geode
1Sol LeWitt, Bands (Not Straight) in Four Directions (1999). Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.
Literature
12-18-2020

Refusing to Gossip

Marcie Rendon
1Julie Mehretu, Babel Unleashed (2001). Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.
Literature
12-23-2020

Smells of the Present Moment

Sagirah Shahid
1Image by Tricia Heuring (2020).
Design Moving Image Performing Arts Visual Art
12-30-2020

Everything you do you must love: On curatorial practice driven by devotion

Tricia Heuring
A square, blond wooden box holds brown clay, compost, and shredded paper. The lid of the box is printed with the words, “We Shall Never Stop Planting”.
1Seitu Jones, We Shall Never Stop Planting (2017). Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.
Literature Visual Art
1-6-2021

A Room with an Ocean View: A Meditation on Art as an Empath’s Path

David Grant
Intricate arcing paint strokes of black, tan, and grey/white swirl around the majority of the canvas, more concentrated near the bottom. The gaps between the strokes are filled with different patters, and form into faces in the lower half of the painting.
1Ta-coumba T. Aiken, The Promise from the series NO WORDS (2020). Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.
Literature Performing Arts
1-11-2021

Fire Water Word Wind Song

Signe V. Harriday
Photo of two women draped in white fabric rolling down the stairs of Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
1Eiko Otake and Chitra Vairavan rehearsing in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine during an exhibit on the divine feminine, November 26, 2016. Photo: Wm Johnston.
Performing Arts
1-20-2021

Deep Listening: Creating from Memories and Speaking through Dance

Chitra Vairavan
Abstract painting of thick brush strokes and watery colors with what appears to be water at the bottom, purple mountains above that, and a curved blue shape at the top with a white border.
1May Janko, Moon Valley (1958). Collection Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.
General
1-21-2021

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