STAGES Biennial 2023 

Stages Biennial invites artists from across North America to select and research sites in Winnipeg to activate, respond to, or consider as a point of departure. Maduka has lived in Treaty One Territory for eight years. For her first significant public art installation, she traced her way back to a phrase she used to describe her paintings: My paintings are love letters to my community. The hope for Nri* for Thought: Languages of Love Personified is to continue the conversation of deepening genuine solidarities between Newcomer Immigrant and Indigenous peoples in Treaty One. The goal was to activate space and imagination as a form of healing and resistance. The ethereal quality of the Geodesic dome’s form and spatial orientation symbolically communicated this aspect of dreaming. Nri* in the title translates to food in the central Igbo Language. Maduka, who is of Igbo descent and often visits her village, Ngene, in Awka South, when back in Nigeria, cannot communicate in her mother tongue. She jumped on a WhatsApp call with her mother, Amechi, who lives in Abuja, to clarify the dialect for which she can encapsulate the word food in the title of her work. This project consisted of a month-long workshop supervised by Emeka-Maduka in partnership with The Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization of Manitoba. For a month, she learnt alongside an Indigenous and a Newcomer Youth. They experienced a smudging ceremony led by Allison Cox (knowledge keeper, drum, and sound carrier), shared meals and laughs, told stories, and made art together. The session concluded with a trip to the Qaumajuq Centre. Both Youths were awarded funds to their RESPs from the production budget.

     

                 

              

The labours of love that this workshop coincided with were planting a vegetable garden of tomatoes, basil, cucumbers, cilantro, sage, and peppers, generously tended to by the Spence Neighborhood Association. The garden was open to all in proximity to stumble upon, take as needed, and consume. For the four-week duration of Stages, The Indigenous Friendship Centre at 45 Robbinson housed the geodesic dome. Following the Biennial, the centre accepted the gift of the dome and garden. This social sculpture counteracted contemporary consumerist culture, with colonial roots, to take more than we need. The aim was slowness and labour rooted in love and patience. While the garden remained exclusive to the community in the 45 Robinson area–to preserve the intent of the project–a video installation and AR presentation of the final project was showcased at Plug-In ICA. Maduka borrowed notions of sharing harvest as a way of life from pre-colonial representations of Nigeria by thinkers like Chinua Achebe. Access to food is a scarce necessity for the Global majority. However, through art-making, unsanctioned distribution can be imagined and activated. These are some of the dreamy qualities for art to create paths to social improvement and collective healing, personifying love.