Sharing the Same Breath brings together nine artists whose work explores human, nonhuman, and interspecies aspects of kinship and connectedness. The show will be on display at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, until April 21, 2024.
“Each/Other,” a giant fabric she-wolf sculpture by Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger, is the show’s focal point. The artisans stitched hundreds of embroidered bandanas given to them from all around the world onto a wolf figure. The crowdsourcing work, according to Watt and Luger, implies kinship between individuals and between animals.
Dyani White Hawk’s I Am Your Relative, a series of life-size portraits of Indigenous women, emphasizes interhuman connection. The piece expresses Oeti akowin (L/N/Dakota) tribal beliefs and understandings of Mitakuye Oyasin (all my relations). The statements on the women’s shirts are intended to humanize and celebrate Indigenous women while fighting illusions and stereotypes that contribute to violence against this people.
William Wegman and Emilie Louise Gossiaux investigate human-animal interactions. Wegman’s early 1970s short movies depict cross-species dialogue and the artist’s relationship with his Weimaraner, Man Ray. Gossiaux’s sculptures and drawings reflect her experiences as a handicapped person and highlight her strong interdependence with her guide dog, London.
Nina Katchadourian and Juan William Chávez collaborate with nonhuman beings as artistic collaborators. Katchadourian’s encounters with arachnids in her Mended Spiderweb series are meant to highlight the impact of human interference and represent the creativity of more-than-human species, whereas Chávez employs unusual forms of beekeeping and agriculture to address social and environmental concerns. His mixed-media work, inspired by Andean customs, tries to portray beekeeping as a ceremonial and political act.
The work of David Freid and Lindsey French is linked by the sentience and agency of the natural world. Freid’s short film “The River is Me” recounts the 2017 legal recognition of New Zealand’s Whanganui River as a person, illustrating how “personhood” may transcend the human species and affect our interaction with the natural world. French’s Phytovision series is an experiment that aims to undermine the supremacy of human vision and senses. She delivers a plant-centric vision of the world through movies designed for plant perception and poems created in conjunction with trees.
The exhibition Sharing the Same Breath is on display at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center through April 21, 2024. Admission is free.
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