Join us on Red Dress Day (May 5th) for the opening of “Dancing With Our Ancestors: Weaving Connections Between Communities”, a collective exhibit that features artists across the globe with lived experiences of disappeared people and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two Spirit people (MMIWG2S+).
In this multi-site exhibit, the Transformative Memory International Network and Butterflies in Spirit stitch different, yet parallel experiences of denunciation, resistance, togetherness, searching for loved ones, and seeking the truth. To reflect upon the aftermath of settler colonialism and prolonged violence, while also illuminating the diverse ways artists and communities can weave spaces to dialogue, contest, and reimagine memory/futurities as a way of collective action.
Dancing with our Ancestors: Weaving Connections Between Communities is a transnational commitment to knit together and recognize the poetics of everyday memories of human beings, who otherwise would be forgotten by dominant history. The pieces that comprise this exhibit are expressions of the numerous resourceful, embodied, and intimate ways in which memory, as a creative force, is articulated by people worldwide who have experienced systemic violence.
The exhibition will feature pieces from Uganda, Mexico, Northern Ireland, Indonesia, Colombia, and Canada. The exhibit also includes three window installations by local artists at Decolonial Clothing (Chinatown), Union Cooperative Initiative (Chinatown), and the windows at UBC Robson Square.
Dates: May 5th, 2025 – May 19, 2025
Location: UBC Robson Square (800 Robson St.) – Sun Room
May 5th “Red Dress Day” Opening Event schedule:
4:00pm: Doors Open
5:00pm: Opening remarks
5:30pm: Performance from Butterflies in Spirit
6:30pm: Panel discussion
This event takes place on the unceded and ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations.
Creators:
Alit Ambara (Indonesia)
Adriana Contreras (Turtle Island & Colombia)
Butterflies in Spirit (Turtle Island – Canada)
Conflict Textiles: Irene MacWilliam (Northern Ireland)
Erika Diettes (Colombia)
Guayacan’s Crafts Group (Bojayá – Colombia)
Luz H. Almendra Aranda & Violeta K. Rozental Almendra (Misak – Colombia)
Morgan Asoyuf (Ts’msyen Eagle Clan from Ksyeen River, BC – Canada)
Movement of Victims of State Crimes – MOVICE (Colombia)
Peter Morin (Tahtlan Nation – Canada)
The Families of the Missing (Gulu – Uganda)
The Women’s Advocacy Network – WAN (Gulu – Uganda)
Poster design: Adriana Contreras
