September 11-12, Saskatoon
This two-day public gathering offers an opportunity to encounter the multi-year project Carried by rivers, held by lands as a whole. Through presentations, conversations, and collective reflection, participating artists and collaborators will share insights from work developed across diverse landscapes and communities, bringing the project's many currents into conversation and considering what they might carry forward.
A Gathering in Saskatoon
Friday, September 11.
Cooking Sections—made up of London-based artists Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe—hosts a public forum that asks how food can contribute to building new futures today. Developed with partners from Treaty 6 Territory, the gathering responds to increasingly severed relationships between people, soil, and food systems. Drawing on the shared etymology of "procurement" and "curating"—both rooted in "taking care"—participants will consider how institutions such as museums, schools, universities, and hospitals might support ecological restoration, land access, and community-led food futures through the choices they make about what they procure and serve.
Saturday, September 12.
On Saturday, the public is invited to listen to participating artists as they gather with collaborators and community members whose contributions have shaped their work throughout Carried by rivers, held by lands. The program reconvenes many of the relationships that have sustained the initiative, bringing stories, processes, and conversations that have unfolded beyond the museum into dialogue with one another. Participants will reflect on the questions, concerns, and connections that have emerged through the project, considering the capacity of artistic practice to build solidarities, circulate knowledge, and contribute to broader processes of social and ecological change.
Full schedule and registration information will be announced soon.
About Carried by rivers, held by lands
The initiative brings together artists working in relation to specific watersheds, coastlines, agricultural regions, Indigenous territories, and remote or rural communities. Contending with the critical interdependencies and specificities that define our shared present and collective future, particularly the urgencies of the climate crisis and the ongoing inheritances of colonial capitalism, Carried by rivers, held by lands builds alliances between artists, artworks, and locations over time.
Carried by rivers, held by lands is generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.
Image captions: Top - CLIMAVORE: On Tidal Zones. Public workshop by Rory MacPhee at low tide. Photo: Colin Hattersley. Courtesy of Cooking Sections. Bottom Laakkuluk Williamson and Jamie Griffiths, White Liar and the Known Shore: Frobisher and the Queen (2021) (detail), 2021. Photography on stretched canvas, hat, flagstaff, fool’s gold. Courtesy of the artists.