As part of the Territoire de rencontre program, the Musée Ilnu de Mashteuiatsh, in collaboration with the SBC Contemporary art gallery, presents the public program Assi sheueiau / Mai Kemaname Kani / Echos of the territories on Tuesday, July 11 and Wednesday, July 12, 2023.  

​

Aiming to open a dialogue between indigenous artists, the program will welcome artists Bane Huni Kuin and Pedro Maná, members of the artists collective Movimento dos Artistas Huni Kuin (MAHKU), from the Huni Kuin people, based in the Brazilian state of Acres, for a week of exchanges of visual and sound practices. 

​

MAHKU (Movimento dos Artistas Huni Kuin), a collective of Huni Kuin artists and researchers, has been safeguarding and renewing their ancestral knowledge and lands through contemporary artistic practice for ten years now. For the Huni Kuin people, caring for the planet means caring for nixi pae (ayahuasca). Protecting ayahuasca is, in other words, intrinsically linked to protecting the forests, rivers and lands, as well as the physical, spiritual and intellectual existence of the Huni Kuin. Based on the transposition of huni meka (the songs of nixi pae ceremonies) into painting, the collective creates poetic works that enable us to enter into contact with the imagination, culture and spirituality of the Huni Kuin people. 

​

Behind MAHKU's practice lie demands for political, cultural and ecological autonomy. MAHKU's actions are in line with the various socio-political mobilizations launched by indigenous communities in the Americas for respect of their ancestral rights and their fight for environmental justice. This meeting will explore art as an activist and community practice. To enrich the exchanges (or moments of sharing), ilnu multidisciplinary artists Sonia Robertson, Soleil Launière and Amélie Courtois will take part in the two days of exchanges. We invite you to discover different approaches and indigenous artistic approaches that place the territory at the heart of their concerns.

​

The public program Assi sheueiau / Mai Kemaname Kani / Echos of the territories is a proposal co-curated by Carla Rangel, Daniel Dinato, Vicky Tremblay and Tania Jourdain.

This project is part of a long-term collaboration between the MAHKU collective, curator Daniel Dinato and the SBC galerie d'art contemporain, which began with the exhibition Vende tela, compra terra  presented at the SBC from September 3 to October 22, 2022. To mark the revitalization of indigenous knowledge and encourage the sharing of knowledge with non-indigenous through the practice of contemporary art and its integration into public space, the collaboration with the MAHKU collective continued with the production of the Hawe Henewakame mural on the walls of the Piscine Paul-Émile Sauvageau swimming pool in Parc L.-O.-Taillon, in Montreal.

​