Tell Me of Your Boats and Your Waters - Where Do They Come From, Where Do They Go? 2022. Edinburgh Art Festival
November 11 to December 18, 2021
Tell Me of Your Boats and Your Waters – Where Do They Come From, Where Do They Go? is a multi-sited commission from Montréal-based artist Nadia Myre, spanning print, installation, poetry and sound. The artist’s work weaves together reference points spanning Scotland and Canada, migratory routes started on the canal, indigenous storytelling, archival research, pattern, prose and song. Among these reference points is a preoccupation with what is missing from the stories and histories that we have, and the forging of a personal account from the artist in lieu of what is not there. Stargazing and the historic use of celestial navigation by sailors
(and tricksters) purposefully merge as a means of orienting oneself.
When the Union Canal opened in 1822, its primary purpose was to bring minerals (coal, lime, stone) into Edinburgh city centre. For speedy construction and to reduce the number of locks, the canal’s route followed the contours of the land, exiting the city through three counties. In the canal’s prime, small industries such as tanneries lined the waters’ edge, whilst it was also possible for passengers to begin their migration to the so-called New World on the ‘Swifts’: Glasgow- bound boats that linked up to their trans-Atlantic voyage. A hulking wooden luggage warehouse built in the middle of the canal – used to separate passenger’s personal belongings from the murky industrial materials – becomes a visual point of departure for the artist. In imagining oneself in another’s skin across time and place, Myre has created a series of sack-like bags made from animal hides, alluding to trade, migration and baggage carried from one place to the next.
While perusing a library in Montréal, Myre came across a book published in 1964 titled ‘Tales of Nanabozho.’ Authored by Scottish-born émigré Dorothy Marion Reid after moving to Canada and working as a librarian, it recounts short stories of the Anishinaabe shapeshifting trickster-character
Nanabozho. Following its publication, Reid won a quinquennial award, recorded an LP in which she narrates the stories, and broadcasted a weekly Children’s radio programme for nine years.
Tales of Nanabozho came just four years after the Canadian government granted Indigenous people the (unconditional) right to vote. Around the same time, Canada shifted its assimilationist policies from mandatory residential schools
to child welfare more broadly; developing a practice that would become known as the Sixties Scoop, where indigenous children and babies were systematically placed into the child welfare system. Myre considers the journey made by Dorothy Reid and the mixed legacy of her book. At once, an academic work of value for ensuring the preservation of indigenous stories, while at the same time, coloured by the worldview of a white woman. Ultimately, what
is most important is Nanabozho: a fundamental non-binary character within Anishinaabe stories who often gets into trouble as a means to mirror how humans should be in the world. Bringing to the fore the decolonial impulse inherent in Myre’s practice, the artist – to a degree – assumes the trickster-Nanabozho spirit and explores what may be missing from Dorothy’s tales through poems visible across both exhibition sites.
Often pairing production methods usually understood as “craft” with contemporary
art praxis, Myre’s practice incorporates the processes of moulding, imprinting, documenting, and weaving. The print methods underpinning the production of her new works feature substances which react, resist and bind to one another. In testing their material properties, she points to ongoing dialogues around agency, assimilation, and co-existence.
— Tiffany Boyle, Curator & Exhibitions Manager, and Janet Archer, CEO, Edinburgh Printmakers
https://www.edinburghartfestival.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/EAFLeafletNadiaMyre-6_7_2022-1.pdf
The co-commission was supported by the PLACE Programme, a partnership between Edinburgh Festivals, The Scottish Government, the City of Edinburgh Council and Creative Scotland. The co-commission was further supported by Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALC), Kinawind Lab at Concordia University, Québec Government Office in London and the High Commission of Canada in the UK as part of Spotlight Canada.