Ancestral Ties to the Flood (2020)
Medium: Installation of image transfers on bed sheets dyed with wine beer and dandelion on sandbags, flagging tape, old journal entries soaked in cigarette butts and mouth wash, sinew, fishing wire, thread, and hide.
“Big Water Song” sung by Strain’s mother, Tracey Strain
I was filling sandbags on the reserve of Kwikwetlem First Nation years ago. I noticed where the dike ended. It stopped at the reserve boundary. Preparation for a flood was already assumed to be coming because decisions made long before I was born impacted the way water flowed. Settlers decided to build dams with no planning for dikes or other means to protect people from the floods. Humans poorly try to control the force of nature more powerful than they wanted to admit, a force we still don’t manage mindfully or respectfully. This got me thinking about how power moves through a landscape and who decides what is protected, who is a part of that landscape and who isn’t, and whose safety is prioritized.
Water has always been a part of the family. My mother’s voice carries it. Old stories carry floods that reshaped the land—land that remembers a time before settlers forgot they were settlers and started drawing lines across it. These stories describe a relationship between people and water that doesn’t begin with ownership and doesn’t end with control because we are it. We are water. We are a flood. We are a river, an ocean, a raindrop, vapour in the air.
I think a lot about what it means to release control as part of liberation. Water moves everything everywhere. Humans try to control it in a childlike manner without reconciling that we can’t control it. It is free. It creates tsunamis, destroys, replenishes, cleanses and nourishes all at the same time. It’s free to do as it wishes.
The sandbags in this sculpture aren’t about trying to create a naive sense of control in this scenario. They are about protecting our liberation, and ironically, they are about protecting water. Maybe the water needs protecting from us as much as we need to protect ourselves from it. We are all water ultimately. The sandbags are about the labour of people who have always had to prepare for what systems refuse to prevent. The flood imagery is layered. On the one hand, it is referring to the literal floods that plague First Nations reserves. On the other hand, it is a metaphor for the power of Indigenous resistance to colonial oppression. The rising tide of Indigenous-led resistance is a fertile and life-giving flood that inspires hope. I sewed archival family photos into the sandbags to show our ties to the flood.
My mother sings the Big Water Song. It comes from Head of the Lake in the Syilx Nation. Liberation is almost incomprehensible to me at times. Maybe it’s a pulse in my body. Everything and nothing at the same time. Water already lives there. And I think that’s why we keep returning to it. Ultimately when I feel overwhelmed at the thought of liberation, I remember that I, like my mother singing the Big Water Song, am water. I can sing in the water and for a brief moment remember that I am a part of it and feel free. Free from settler colonial history, free from abuses of power, free from stigma, free from the horrors of late stage capitalism, free from the rigid cis-heteropatriarchy, free from mass surveillance, free from genocide. I want people to remember they are water and love each other the way they love the feeling of jumping in water on a hot summer day.
Additionally as part of this online exhibit, I have included a video work called, what do you know?
what do you know? (2023)
Commissioned specifically for the Belkin’s outdoor screen and shown from July to October 2023, what do you know? comprises three segments that layer voices and locations across space and time. As part of the installation, the video was surrounded by an in-situ painting that evokes a power that is traced to different memories, stories and places. This painting becomes a portal into and beyond the moving image, but is not necessary in future presentations of the work. Strain’s mother, brother, niece and nephew figure in the video, sharing two poems that are in dialogue with one another. The first poem was written by Strain’s grandfather to honour his mother at her funeral. It reflects on life before colonization and situates Strain’s great grandmother as one who had lived in good relation with the land and her ancestors: “They believed we belonged to the land and the land belonged to us but in death.”
See additional details here: https://collection.belkin.ubc.ca/Detail/objects/19883
Filmed in proximity to the Fraser River, near where the artist lives, what do you know? begins with the voice of Strain’s mother reciting her father’s poem as the low angle, hand-held camera follows her along a snowy path into the forest. The location shifts to the foreshore of the Burrard Inlet with its beaches, cranes, and marine industry where resources come onto, as well as off of, the land. In the low winter light, the family circles, turning inward toward each other in a moment in which the legacy of colonialism and extraction is palpable. Words are absent, only the gestures speak. In the third segment Strain’s brother, nephew and niece occupy a space between foreground and background, their faces separated and framed by Coast Salish eye cut-outs. Their voices come together and break apart in their individual recitations of a second poem written by Neil Eustache, Strain’s uncle. The words come in and out of sync, not unlike how knowledge is absorbed and understood: “There are things they don’t want you to know, there are things that you didn’t know, and there are things you will know.” what do you know? reveals the connection between kinship, land, labour, extraction and where knowledge is held.
Artist Bio
Manuel Axel Strain is from the xʷməθkʷəyəm (Musqueam), Simpcw, and Syilx peoples. Strain’s mother is Tracey Strain and father is Eric Strain. Tracey’s parents are Harold Eustache (from Chuchua) and Marie Louis (from nk̓maplqs). Eric’s Parents are Helen Point (from xʷməθkʷəy̓ əm) and John Strain (from Ireland). Although they attended Emily Carr University of Art + Design, they prioritize Indigenous epistemologies through the embodied knowledge of their relatives and ancestors. They have contributed work to the Vancouver Art Gallery, Surrey Art Gallery, and the UBCO FINA Gallery. They were longlisted for the 2022 Sobey Award, and were a recipient of the 2022 Portfolio Prize.
Website: www.manuelaxelstrain.com | Instagram: @manuelaxelstrain
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