Join the Southern Alberta Art Gallery to celebrate the opening of its newest exhibitions “What breaks on the horizon?” by Gabi Dao, “In honoured dust” by Megan Feniak and “Teach Me a Song” by Elisa Harkins along with new Shop at SAAG feature artist Indig Busy-ness.

Exhibition opening reception
October 14, 2023
7-9pm
Southern Alberta Art Gallery

Join the Southern Alberta Art Gallery to celebrate the opening of its newest exhibitions “What breaks on the horizon?” by Gabi Dao, “In honoured dust” by Megan Feniak and “Teach Me a Song” by Elisa Harkins along with new Shop at SAAG feature artist Indig Busy-ness.

Gabi Dao | What breaks on the horizon | Lower Gallery
The figure of the bat is the focal point of Gabi Dao’s solo exhibition What breaks on the horizon? Utilizing dramatic video installations, sculptural interventions, and a new series of ceramic and textile marionettes, Dao considers the bat at a unique set of intersections between ecology and economy, pestilence and good fortune, sight and sound, and alienation and belonging. Dao’s bat marionettes are posed throughout the gallery and feature prominently in their videos, drawing upon a long history of puppetry as an educational, satirical, and transgressive dramatic medium.

Elisa Harkins | Teach Me a Song | Upper Gallery
Teach Me a Song is an ongoing song preservation project where the artist asks Indigenous friends to teach her one song. Each song is performed for video and the resulting audio is transcribed into sheet music, preserving the songs for possible future performances. Since 2021, Harkins has recorded nine songs with singers and musicians from Osage, Cree, Seminole, Cherokee, Kiowa, and Blackfoot traditions. Part performance and part song preservation, Teach Me a Song is based on an exchange between artist and performers, of sharing and vulnerability in the common pursuit of playing and listening to contemporary Indigenous music.

Megan Feniak | In honoured dust | Library Gallery
In honoured dust assembles Megan Feniak’s recent sculptures of caterpillars, Glacier Lilies, and Cyclocosmia that consider a shared connection between consciousness and the earth. Through the approach of a craftsperson, Feniak depicts these caterpillars, lilies, and trapdoor spiders in laboriously hand-rendered materials of carved wood, cast aluminum, and bronze. Feniak’s detailed depictions of these creatures of the earth both disgust and attract. The negative subconscious stimulation from insects and other ground-dwellers is thought to come from their association with filth, decomposition, and mortality. Considering Feniak’s sculptures, this psychic impulse is a bridge to remembering our connection with the ground and the transformations possible within it.

Indig Busy-ness | Shop at SAAG Feature Artist
Indig Busy-ness is an arts practice and passion project of Naatoiyiki aka Cheyenne McGinnis, a non-binary Niitsitapi individual who grew up for the majority of her life in Kainaiwa, the Blood Tribe. Their work features prints created at CASA around the theme of Blackfoot cultural retention and Indigenous futurisms as well as apparel and jewelry created with other Indigenous Artists.