To Be – Named

Names are a key aspect to our identity(s), both personal and cultural. They are what we have been called in our communities, what we call ourselves, what is sometimes assigned to us and they ultimately determine how we live and move through the world. Whatever their cultural origins, names determine whether we are understood or misunderstood, nurtured or repressed, elevated or eradicated. They are how we are inscribed, documented by others, and are used by disciplines and institutions to define, categorize, attempt to discipline, and sometimes control the world. Our names carry knowledge of our Mother Tongue, or the loss of knowledge through attempted eradication of it. They embody how Native peoples inhabit and name Native homelands/reservations/reserves and non-Natives inhabit and name colonized lands and the processes of decolonization now attempted by both. They move with us and can invoke connections through time and space when (re)called. Names are highly personal, at the same time as being wholly political. How is it that we rarely explore, investigate and face what it means To Be—Named?

This exhibition will be multi-site: traveling and adapting among seven EHCN international partners.