What Was Always Yours And Never Lost

About the event

EXHIBITION | May 16, 2023 – June 30, 2023

What Was Always Yours And Never Lost provides an essential introduction to recent works of video art and experimental documentary by indigenous film and video makers from throughout North America. The nine included films traverse a wide range to topics and formal strategies while touching on indigeneity—assertions of identity and presence in the face of colonial history. They make space for poetry, for beauty, and speak to the joys of preserving the past, establishing community, and seeing the future differently.

Notably, this program was curated by MacArthur Fellow Sky Hopinka, who writes:

“It’s a lonely thought that outside of the safe harbors of reservations, reserves, towns, circles of friends, and remembrances of what was and what could be, are whole other worlds that are familiar, yet at the same time still foreign. The moniker of the Indigenous is vast and is often centered on those of us affected by Western colonialism. It was difficult to choose which works by each of these artists to include here, but the films here are both ones that I’ve been watching for years, and that are brand new to me. They’ll teach you things that you didn’t know you needed to learn; they claim what was always theirs and celebrate what was never lost.”

What Was Always Yours And Never Lost presents an intergenerational selection of films by the following artists and collectives: TJ Cuthand, Colectivo Los Ingrávidos, James Luna, Caroline Monnet, and Jackson Polys.

Organized by the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art WSU in partnership with Video Data Bank, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Funding for this exhibition is provided by the Samuel H. and Patricia W. Smith Endowment and members of the museum.