The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (AGGV)’s new exhibition, As Waters Merge – swaying waves beckoning us closer, showcases various Indigenous artworks that portray the ocean and the life that emerges from its depths. The underlying philosophical themes of the exhibit revolve around togetherness, joy, and love.
For exhibit guest curator Camille Georgeson-Usher, As Waters Merge is not only a unique opportunity to showcase Indigenous art, it’s also an opportunity to enmesh the viewer in a multi-sensory experience that involves visual art, music, and poetry.
“I kind of wanted the sound to help create that rhythm, and then to pair it with the poetry is this, like, multi-force of suggesting a way of reading the exhibition that is kind of offering a rhythm that people can either hold onto or totally ignore,” says Georgeson-Usher. “Like [if] they don’t read the poetry, then they can still hear the sound or engage in that form of rhythm in a different way. So that’s kind of how I think about sound and different installations and uses of writing, the placement of art as this kind of gesture of trying to figure out a rhythm of space. So that’s one of the things that I was trying to work through with that one.”
Georgeson-Usher also believes that As Waters Merge’s focus on oceanic and water motifs adds great existential and personal weight to the gallery.
“What I love about the ocean is that it’s always in this kind of state of becoming its next form. It never is the same thing in any second, and there’s just something really beautiful and freeing about that, and that if we kind of translate it to humanity and what we learn from that is that we’re always kind of adapting and becoming our next form,” says Georgeson-Usher. “So, I really love… learning from the ocean in that there’s no stagnancy. Like, we can always adapt, and we can always become that next water body, metaphorically speaking. In that, there’s something quite freeing and that we can always be adapting as humans; freeing and hopeful, I want to say. So that’s kind of how I think about the ocean, this non-stagnant way of understanding self and understanding growth and community.”
Georgeson-Usher also feels that As Waters Merge is a positive countercultural break from trauma-dominated narratives.
“I just saw so much content that highlighted that trauma, but it felt like there was no other way to talk about us,” she says. “And it just made me sad. And so, what I was seeing from my own communities is my generation of Native folks kind of coming together and how we build communities. And so much of the gatherings that we have when we actually come together are supremely joyful, and we share food, we go adventure together and we have built this culture of building one another up versus being so focused on staying in the trauma.”
For Georgeson-Usher, it comes down to working on the future she wants to see.
“So, every time I tell people that my work right now is just focusing on our joy, our pleasure, and our happiness,” she says, “that relief is something that people go, ‘That is so needed. It is what we want to see. It’s what we want to hear. It’s how we want to be able to envision the future for minority folks that have to face this.’”
As Waters Merge – swaying waves beckoning us closer
Until Sunday, October 4
Art Gallery of Greater Victoria
aggv.ca