Dani Kastelein-Longlade and Amina Lalor along with with guest artists Katherine Rae Diemert and Brenda Mabel Reid have created an inspiring and beautiful exhibition, Journey With Our Kin,  at the Queens Square Idea Exchange gallery in Cambridge Ontario. The exhibition is open until Feb. 5th, 2023.

I got to talk with Dani and Amina about their work at the exhibition, and about how getting to know the lands where we live may interrupt the colonial frameworks we daily navigate. We discuss relationships with the land, the Nokom’s House project we have all been a part of, and about their place in the world along with varied identities, passions, and work they take up.

This episode is also formulated on the questions Dani and Amina pose with their exhibition:

What does it mean to care for the land that cares for us? How do we foster kinship among all our relations — the interconnected network of creation that encompasses the earth, water, air, sun, moon, plants, fungi, and animals?

How do we reconcile and bring together multiple perspectives to build community in connection with the land?

How do we strengthen our capacity to care for the land? What skills do we need to do so?

How do we creatively express our journeys of (re)connection with our other-than-human kin?

To know the land is to understand colonialism and its impacts, as well as to know efforts in decolonial space making, which inherently roots relationship with the more-than-human world as a foundation. Understanding histories, and futures, of lands and those who have, do, and will continue to live on them, human and non, is a cornerstone of this “to know the land” project I am working within. The confluence of these conversations, my own project, and the artistic expressions from the exhibition help in conceptualizing, building, and centering intimacy with the wilder world. Naturalist knowledge, or using a different frame, interspecies relationship building, is about healing broken ties and creating new reciprocal approaches between different bodies (human, water, fungal, vegetal, etc). This is what I believe Dani, Amina, Katherine, and Brenda are touching upon in their work. I am grateful for the reflection their creations evoke in me.

Big thanks to Dani and Amina for their time, and to Toni Hafkenscheid for taking the photos of the artwork.