RECENT Exhibitions
Tyson Houseman: Mycorrhizal Dreaming / Rêveries mycorhiziennes
March 1st - March 9th, 2025
daphne presents Mycorrhizal Dreaming, an exterior projection by Tyson Houseman during Nuit blanche 2025. The projection opens on March 1st at 5pm, and will be on view on daphne’s front window from March 1st to 9th.
“The title Mycorrhizal Dreaming speaks to these different and deeper forms of knowledge that come from the land [...] and medicines, and the research and understandings of different forms of consciousness of the plants and the land.” Tyson Houseman
Mycorrhizal Dreaming is an immersive installation using video projection feedback loops to transform and respond to specific spaces in an infinite loop projection installation, centered around a suspended botanical sculpture.
Ludovic Boney
Yahwatsira’ / Family Gathering / Rassemblement familial
September 6 - December 14, 2024
Ludovic Boney’s art installation titled yahwatsira’ / Rassemblement familial / Family Gathering is a powerful and immersive experience that transforms our perspective of space, setting, and time. The artist cleverly blends nostalgia, memories, and reflection into one unforgettable journey that reminds us of the importance of community, family, and the simple pleasures of life.
Within the confines of a temporary car shelter, an unexpected sight awaits the curious observer. Familiar domestic scenes unfold as we venture through this unique structure, carefully selected by the artist for its resemblance to the longhouses of the Huron-Wendat Nation. Quebec City’s temporary car shelters are not just functional structures for protecting vehicles from harsh winter conditions, they have become iconic symbols of the unique winter landscape and an ingrained part of the local cultural fabric. Tempos and longhouses of the Huron-Wendat Nation may differ in their construction and cultural contexts, but they share a common purpose in providing shelter and protection. Both structures speak to the adaptability and ingenuity of communities in creating spaces that meet their specific needs. By understanding and appreciating the diversity of shelter structures, we can gain deeper insights into the relationship between humans, their environments, and the cultural expressions that emerge from this interaction.
Boney is known for his awe-inspiring large-scale public art projects that evoke a sense of wonder and curiosity in viewers. Public art has long been considered a catalyst for cultural expression, urban revitalization, and community engagement. However, it is important to recognize that public art can sometimes be perceived as impersonal, detached from the individual, and lacking a personal connection. By creating a multi-sensory experience, Boney encourages us to immerse ourselves in the artwork, triggering memories that evoke a sense of nostalgia. We are reminded of cherished moments shared with loved ones, of laughter echoing through family gatherings, and of the simple pleasures that bring us joy. In this way, the artist prompts us to appreciate the importance of community and the power of human connection.
Resist with Love: The Xtopias of Solomon Enos Kūʻē me ke Aloha: Nā Xtopia a Solomon Enos
Kahu mālama ʻia na / Commissarié par / Curated by Skawennati
June 21 - August 18, 2024
Solomon Enos, Kū‘ē me ke aloha Resist with Love (2023)
Vast and Exuberant: The Futurist Imaginaries of Solomon Enos by Jason Lewis
“Aloha. My name is Solomon Enos. I am an artist, illustrator, and a game designer. And that's today. Tomorrow I might be a few other things. The day after that, I might be a few less things. [laughter] But very best way to put it is I'm a shape-shifter. In the most useful sense. [laughter]”
This is how Enos introduced himself in our 2017 interview. It still captures much of what I find provocative, entrancing, and joyous about his practice, a staggering volume of work across multiple media notable for its inventiveness, expansiveness, and generosity. He characterizes his practice as a conversation with his community in Hawai‘i that, among other things, seeks to create space to tell stories of the long past and even longer future of Kānaka Maoli. The works in Resist With Love: The Xtopias of Solomon Enos are but a small sample of his exuberant future imaginaries.
The exhibition features three works from Enos’ Akua AI series. ‘Akua’ is the ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi term that is often glossed (somewhat inadequately) as ‘god’ or ‘spirit’. In Hawaiian cosmology, the 40,000 akua have specific (if at times multitudinous) characteristics, roles, and spheres of activity. Whether making love, waging war, giving birth, or hunting for octopus, there is an akua who is responsible for—and responsive to—those activities.
Enos describes the Akua AI as experiments in “magical realism as ancient deities begin to upload themselves into digital realms to challenge the new gods of misinformation and greed.” These deities first come into being as Kānaka Maoli knowledge-keepers and scholars began digitizing the vast trove of Hawaiian-language newspapers published from 1834 to 1948. As the texts became part of cyberspace, the Hawaiian akua which they describe took shape in virtual space, adapting to its computational fabric. They develop Artificial Intelligence avatars who accompany Kānaka Maoli as they extend Hawaiian knowledge practices into this new territory.
Enos is a great lover of science fiction, and the Akua AI were inspired by William Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy and Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. Gibson coined the term ‘cyberspace’ in the first Sprawl novel, Neuromancer (1984). In the second, Count Zero (1986), he imagined a globe-spanning AI emerging out of cyberspace in the form of avatars modeled on the loa (spirits) of the Haitian Vodou tradition. The AI chooses these avatars to facilitate communication with its human creators across profound differences in cognitive apparatuses.
Enos draws on Gaiman to imagine how new gods come into being, old gods pass, and gods new and old migrate from one territory to another. In the novel American Gods (2001), Gaiman considers how gods require believers to exist, and thus their power waxes and wanes as the number of those believers—and the degree of their fervor—grows and diminishes. He imagines new gods spawning alongside new belief systems, such as those driving fantasies of American industrial-techno-media exceptionalism, as they come into being.
Enos’ Akua AI are old gods moving into new territory. Kāne is the akua of fresh water and light, and his AI avatar uses his ʻōʻō (pick-staff for finding water) to dig into the soil—the substrate—of cyberspace, bringing forth vitality and abundance to counter the rot instigated by the selfish techno-solutionism of Silicon Valley. Hina is the goddess of the moon, maternity, and making kapa (bark clothing), using her i‘e kuku (a grooved club for beating tough plant fibers smooth). The Hina AI’s i‘e kuku has 0s and 1s rather than grooves, and she uses it to beat the fabric of cyberspace to “rework the tapestry of the human story by disrupting the global and local communication networks of right-wing extremists, white supremacists, and all the forms that authoritarian dictators and demagogues take.” And, finally, Mo‘oinanea is the mother of all the mo‘o, the lizards who guard fresh water; mo‘o are also the storytellers. In cyberspace, data is the water that nourishes everything, and so the Mo‘oinanea AI tends to the quality of the information flowing through virtual spaces, fighting against misinformation and misuse of peoples’ personal data, while ensuring traditional mo‘olelo find their place in this new world and fresh mo‘olelo are created to respond to evolving realities.
Enos is opening discussions with his community about the great challenges of our time—like AI—in a Hawai‘i-rooted way. He hopes the Akua AI series will also inspire other Indigenous communities to bring their akua, or their ways of making sense of the world, into these new virtual-digital-computational territories. As he notes, “at times it seems our species knows more about building rockets than we know about what it means to be human”. At this moment, in 2024, we know much about building machines for extraction and exploitation. Perhaps Enos’ Akua AI can show us how to create them otherwise, such that we better know ourselves as we venture ever further into an ever-deepening ocean of bits.
[laughter]
Cheyenne Rain Le Grande ᑭᒥᐘᐣ
Mullyanne ᓃᒥᐦᐃᑐᐤ
April 27- June 8, 2024
Mullyanne by Becca Taylor
Mullyanne, The movements of your ribbons reminds me of the setting sunset along the lake. How the pastel colours ripple into one another as the calm waters dance reflecting the sky back to itself. Growing up visiting a Northern Alberta lake not so different from your own, I can feel the calm coolness radiating from the waters’ edge as the sun gently begins its decent to rest behind the horizon. Whenever I leave the prairies, I yearn for the sky. Which is probably why I never leave long.
Mullyanne, The flattened pastel light, soft movement and tenderness ebbs me in between two-states. Like the littoral of a lake shifting between reality and an alternative state. A dream state. I spend time immersed into your reality but shift back into my own body as a witness. Different realities come together to make up a community, a story, an understanding. Right now, I am listening and witnessing to yours. Learning as I watch you shift in and out of space.
Mullyanne, The beads that are adorned to your face reminds me of words of Métis Scholar Sherry Farrell Racette. She shares that “Language, symbolism, and continuity of practice 'grandmothered' ancient meanings on to new forms; rather than marking a decline in material culture, they illustrate the important work of women in the creation and synthesis of knowledge systems”[1] While she focused on beads, fibres and cloth in her investigations. I see the continuation of continuity of practice in the Bepsi tabs and the platforms of the moccasins. How language and your cultural understandings are embedded into the construction of the garments. A showcase of fluidity, survival and adaptation of cultural understandings and knowledge transfer. How each item is unique to you but taught by our ancestors.
Mullyanne, the futurity of your materials reminds me of the words surrounding the concept of Indigenous futurisms[2] of mixed Anishinaabe and settler author Grace Dillon and Métis writer Chelsea Vowel. Dillion points out that Indigenous futurisms is ‘how personally one is affected by colonization, discarding the emotional and psychological baggage carried from its impact, and recovering ancestral traditions in order to adapt in our post–Native Apocalypse world.” Chelsea Vowel states: “Indigenous futurisms are not merely synonymous with science fiction and fantasy, despite how they may be viewed as such within the mainstream. Indigenous futurists express their ontologies in various forms, and as Grace Dillon puts it, “our ideas of body, mind, and spirit are true stories, not forms of fantasy.”[3]
Mullyanne, I am surrounded by Language. Syllabics on the wall. The soft echo of your voice singing an identifiable song, that I understand even though I do not know the nēhiyawēwin words to sing with you. It’s enchanting and comforting. You share with me crystal visions. Unlike Stevie Nicks you do not keep these visions to yourself but share them with us. A future centred in Nehiyaw Isko knowledge systems, language and the prairie skies.
[1] Sherry Farrell Racette, “My Grandmothers Loved to Trade: The Indigenization of European Trade Goods in Historic and Contemporary Canada,” Journal of Museum Ethnography, No. 20 (March 2008): 77
[2] The term Indigenous Futurisms was first used by Grace Dillon in 2003. Indigenous Futurisms was used to describe a movement within art and media forms that expressed Indigenous perspectives on future, present and past.
[3] Chelsea Vowel, “Writing Toward a Definition of Indigenous Futurism,” Literary Hub. June 2022 https://lithub.com/writing-toward-a-definition-of-indigenous-futurism/
Cedar-Eve
Mnidoo Gamii
April 27- June 8, 2024
Cedar Eve : Mnidoo Gammi
by Chalsley Taylor
Energy never dies — it can only be transformed. There are multiple realms of existence and, in death, our spirit only passes into another such realm. Mnidoo Gammi, Cedar Eve’s first solo exhibition, affirms connections that sustain across myriad boundaries; in it, we encounter both those present in our physical plane and those who have transitioned beyond it.
Cedar’s mother lives in Toronto, where the artist grew up, but is from Saugeen First Nation. Her father’s side is from Wikwemikong Unceded Territory. In this way, Mnidoo Gammi (so-called Georgian Bay), forms a locus of the artist’s lineage. Her mother’s land rests on Lake Huron, along the Bruce Peninsula; Mnidoo Gammi is the body of water that connects this Peninsula at Manitoulin island, where Wikwemikong lies. Anishinaabemowin for “Spirit Lake”, this water speaks to interrelational dynamics that echo throughout the exhibition, situating the conversations generated between its pieces. We witness Cedar’s formal strategies build upon one another across mediums to reflect gestures of care, interconnection and play. Within her distinct visual language, few if any discreet bounds exist between entities we observe, human or otherwise; spirits depicted in vibrant, abstracted forms flow into one another.
Cedar identifies community as a central part of her practice, noting this was lacking in her early years.[1] In her pieces, expansive spiritual entities often fit themselves into the spaces around or between photographed subjects, their limbs curved to hold friends, family or Cedar herself. Their presence appears protective or comforting; at times, their heads tilt inward to rest against those of loved ones.[2] Spirit Stitch, cotton pillows featuring portraits of Cedar’s parents, draws together family and restorative care. An offering to the artist’s dream world, the collection oscillates between the physical and metaphysical. With a history of intense and vivid dreams, the artist notes she sometimes awakens feeling as if she’d not rested at all. It was a common occurrence for her and her brother, Zach (ba), to have similar dreams in the same night despite living far apart.
The link between the physical and metaphysical is reprised in Honouring the Dead, a series depicting loved ones “called to continue their spirit journey”.[3] Creating these works provides a constructive method for the artist to process her grief, for it is an act of reflection and communion with the deceased. Cedar is in dialogue with these individuals as she adorns their photograph amidst a torrent of memories, such that the completed works stand as mnemonic devices, surreptitiously stirring up stories painful and humorous alike. Yet, as she notes, Honouring is not intended to centre the trauma of loss, citing her purposeful use of bright colours to produce intricate beauty. As in Spirit Stitch, Honouringdelineates Cedar’s lineage from her point of view; concretized in these works, this lineage elides the division between blood relations and chosen family. In this archival series, which curator Cécilia Bracmort describes as “a visual altar,” the artist combines beading and photography — both of which techniques, as Bracmort notes, “are related to the notion of time: an elongated time for the former and the instant (snapshot) for the latter”.[4]
Works in Mnidoo Gammi conspicuously mark time even as they collapse it. Cedar often appropriates archival practices to her own ends, best reflected in Cedrus Annum, a series of daily self portraits. Here we are charged to consider the ways in which these practices refuse prescriptions of historic archival sciences and undermine their authority. With the artist controlling what can and cannot be discerned, how should we (how can we) impose any organizational structures beyond the chronological? How are the various parts to be categorized, named and thus defined? To some extent, Cedrus Annum also functions as a personal history, one whose primary modality is play. The artist frustrates our attempts to decipher the moments (and selves) recorded in these images: Drawing over the instant photographs to control our view, she adds faces or blocks of colour to some; elsewhere, small markings appear in decorative motifs. Other portraits appear without any modification at all.
As Cedar Eve illuminates, obscures and transforms at will, her work insists upon the indelible nature of the relationships connecting the artist to her community, family, and past selves. Though the works we encounter in Mnidoo Gammi are deeply personal, she extrapolates the intimate into singular visions of interrelational connection, communication and self-representation. Post encounter, we may begin to perceive the mutability of time for ourselves.
[1] Usher, Camille. Relations, 2016, 36–41.
[2] Depicted in Cedar Eve, “Nokomis/Zigos (Grandma/Auntie)” from “Honouring the Dead,” 2012.
[3] Michael “Cy” Cywink, Personal communication to Cedar Eve, March 2024.
[4] Cécilia Bracmort, Personal communication to Cedar Eve, April 2024.