An art installation honouring the lives of missing and murdered indigenous women of Canada and the United States is due to be exhibited at North Battleford's Chapel Gallery from Jan. 15 to Feb. 7. In preparation, there have been a number of community conversations and events and fundraising has begun.
North Battleford Walking With Our Sisters is looking for donations of art for its Online Facebook Art Auction to help raise funds to bring the exhibition to North Battleford.
Anyone interested in donating a piece of art, or creating one, is invited to contact the Allen Sapp Gallery by Oct. 31.
They are also requesting donations for a silent auction to be held during the Steak Night at Blend Nov. 5 starting at 7 p.m. This includes food hamper items, which will be auctioned off.
The public is invited to join in this first fundraiser for the group to bring Walking With Our Sisters to North Battleford. Tickets are $25. To purchase tickets call 306-445-1760. All proceeds will go to Walking with Our Sisters North Battleford.
Walking With Our Sisters is a massive commemorative art installation made up of more than 1,763 pairs of moccasin vamps (tops) plus 108 pairs of children’s vamps. The large collaborative art piece is being made available to the public through selected galleries and locations and has been on tour since 2013 with bookings into 2019.
The work exists as a floor installation made up of beaded vamps arranged in a winding path formation on fabric and includes cedar boughs. Viewers remove their shoes to walk on a path of cloth alongside the vamps.
To create the installation, a general call was put out to all “caring souls” who wanted to contribute a pair of moccasin tops. Women, men and children, both native and non-native, gathered in living rooms, universities, community halls and penitentiaries across North America to bead, sew, quill, weave, paint, embroider and create mixed media pairs of moccasin tops out of the love, care and concern they have for missing or murdered women and their families, some of them their own.
Each pair of vamps represents one missing or murdered indigenous woman. The unfinished moccasins represent the unfinished lives of the women whose lives were cut short. The children’s vamps are dedicated to children who never returned home from residential schools. Together the installation represents all these women, paying respect to their lives.
In addition to the moccasin tops, 60 songs were submitted for the audio portion of the exhibit. Those songs are heard while audiences experience the exhibit.
