Walking and Talking Treaties

GINKGO SISTAS, Jumblies, ALPHA Alternative

A Space Windows

April 14 – May 7, 2016

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Walking and Talking Treaties is a collaboration between GINKGO SISTAS, ALPHA Alternative School and Jumblies Theatre for Images Festival 2016. Comprised of 30 individual pairs of handmade shoes, a video and four fabric hangings, it focuses on the legacy of treaties. One shoe per pair shares the student’s learning about indigenous history and experience with treaties, and the second represents their own family’s history.

Collectively, Walking and Talking Treaties demonstrates commitment to make visible connections as accomplices between indigenous, immigrant and settler communities.

Biographies

GINKGO SISTAS is a collective by Anishnaabe artist Maria Hupfield and Chinese Canadian educator Emily Chan in Toronto. We create socially engaged projects that highlight the responsibility of voice and necessity of communal dialogue. Our name comes from the Ginkgo tree: a ‘living fossil’, and the sole survivor of an ancient group of trees.

Jumblies, founded by Ruth Howard, makes art in ordinary and extraordinary places, with for and about the people and stories found there. Jumblies artists involved in creating this project include: Marianne Alas, Mackenzie Konecny, Adrienne Marcus Raja, Liam Coo, Parker Dirks, Karis Jones Pard, Rhonda Lucy, Nikki Shaffeellah, Ange Loft and others.

ALPHA Alternative is Toronto’s oldest public alternative elementary school, founded in 1972. Located near King/Spadina, it upholds the values of democratic education in promoting a lifelong love of learning.