The Center for Native Futures’ exhibition, Gagizhibaajiwan, is the organization’s second exhibition presented as part of Art Design Chicago. Incorporating themes of duality and paradox, the exhibition tells the stories surrounding Misshepezhieu, the Underwater Panther, and Animikii, the Thunderbird. Art Design Chicago sat down with the show’s curator, Lois Taylor Biggs (Cherokee Nation/White Earth Ojibwe), to understand more about Anishinaabe storytelling and how this exhibition came to be.  

Q1: Can you tell us the story behind Gagizhibaajiwan and about your curatorial process? 

Lois: “So, Gagizhibaajiwan started with a piece that I wrote several years ago for an indigenous art writing residency run through the Indigenous Curatorial Collective, a Canadian arts organization, and Momus, an arts publication. Around that time, I had read this brilliant article by Alan Corbiere and Mikinaak Migwans all about these images of Misshepezhieu, the underwater panther and Animikii, the thunderbird, these two really important beings in Anishinaabe storytelling.  

Alan Corbiere and Mikinaak Migwans were writing about how these beings appear in art and what’s going on in those representations. What they tell us about the relationship between Misshepezhieu and Animikii, what power, what stories that’s drawing out. In that piece, they talk about how these two beings live in constant opposition. They’re always fighting. There is an inherent tension in their relationship. But they are also highly complementary. In Anishinaabe art, it will often represent them on either side of a bag for instance. Sometimes, too, they’ll be represented together. So, there will be a thunderbird that has underwater panther imagery incorporated into it somehow and then vice versa with the underwater panther having thunderbird imagery incorporated into it.  

They link this to Anishinaabe understandings of paradox and of balance. This understanding that we all contain something of our opposite within us. This stuck with me in so many ways, both on a personal level in terms of my relationship to Anishinaabe stories and what I knew of these beings before reading that article and in terms of art.  

I thought this layered way of thinking about the world within an Anishinaabe cosmology— thinking about earth, water, sky, this multilayered reality, and the way that these two beings stand —the way paradox helps us to traverse and live in balance just felt like a really helpful way to think about art. Anishinaabe art can help us move through that depth with confidence, with respect.  

That was really exciting to me, and I wound up writing that piece. For a while, not really knowing what would come of it, I found a way to share it with a broader audience through Forge Project’s journal. When Deborah and Monica approached me about curating a show for Center for Native Futures, I just immediately thought this would be a perfect space for it. We are on Anishinaabe land. We are in a place that is a point of confluence for many Great Lakes nations. So, it felt like a great opportunity to take that story and take these themes and draw them out in a place that is meaningful with an organization that is doing great work to support Indigenous artists and art.  

Then the other exciting starting point was work by Zoey Wood-Salomon, who’s been a close family friend of mine for a long time. She’s the one who first told me about Misshepezhieu, the underwater panther. She’s painted this being for many decades now, since the 80s. When I was writing this piece, Zoey’s work was a big part of it. Zoey was the first artist I knew for sure, okay, I’ll include her work in the show.” 

Q2: How did you select the pieces to tell that narrative? How involved were the featured artists in this process? 

Lois: “That was really fluid and based on who I reached out to and what story they were interested in telling with me. Zoey, I knew from the start I would like to include. But then as I learned more, it was really important to me to include art in a variety of mediums. Ranging from Zoey’s paintings to Michael Belmore’s sculptures to Renee Dillard’s weaving, and Marcella’s multimedia work.  

I just started looking into artists that I knew. I knew of Renee Wasson Dillard and I knew of Marcella Ernest through previous work and research. As I learned more about their work, I saw some really strong connections. Renee is a teacher and educator in her community and is really well known for bringing these traditional fiber weaving teachings to people. She is also highly knowledgeable about these stories. As soon as I started talking to her, it became clear that we had something important to do through this work.  

It wound up being a similar process when I reached out to other people, where I would connect with them, and I would learn that they were thinking similar things in their work and the same stories were echoing in their heads.  

Similarly with Marcella, I saw her give a talk last year on teaching queer Indigenous art history at a conference and just loved her perspective. She had also been thinking about these stories.  

In Chicago, there is a world of Indigenous sound art and instillation and film-based practice. I had seen bits and pieces of that represented in Chicago through performances and installations, but I was excited to bring that to the Center for Native Futures.  

With Michael Delmore, he was the one artist in the group I wasn’t familiar with before starting research for the show. But for cultural reasons, I wanted to include copper in the show in some way. I was looking into artists who are doing interesting work with copper. He just kept coming up. He works with stone and copper, often on a monumental scale. When I reached out to him, it worked out that he was able to ship one smaller piece to the Center for Native Futures that was incredibly thematically relevant and stunning in the space. And he also created two new works for the show, these wampum belts called Turbulent Water and Turbulent Sky.  

[This process] was very much guided by artists who were thinking through similar themes. But then artists who turned out to also be reflecting on and making work around the relationship between these two beings.” 

Q3: The artwork in this exhibition references two beings from traditional Anishinaabe storytelling. What are the messages that we can take from those stories today? 

Lois: “The exhibition is looking at Misshepezhieu, the underwater panther and Animikii, the thunderbird. This oppositional yet complimentary relationship that they have in Anishinaabe culture and storytelling brings up so much for me on a number of levels. On one level, in terms of living with the paradoxes of life and living with contradiction, and finding a way to find balance and power in that as a way to guide and ground ourselves. In this broader philosophical level, it’s been a helpful lens for me to think about art and life.  

At the same time too, this theme of balance and paradox also brings us to our actions and a number of artworks within the show, especially thinking about Marcella’s video installation, brings us to these questions around reciprocity with water, land, sky and how that can inform our lived day to day reality and choices.  

These stories felt so salient and beautiful as a basis for this show because it brings us to these really big broad understandings of how we live with paradox.  

How do we live with the contradiction and ambiguity that’s inherent in life? How does Anishinaabe storytelling and art speak to that? How does that, as part of the reflection, inform the way that we are living in a web of relationships in day to day life?” 

Q4: Were there any challenges you faced in curating this show? 

Lois: “Something on my mind throughout the process was privacy and how much information to share and not share because these are very sacred and powerful stories. I wanted the artists to feel a sense of comfort and agency in deciding what they did and didn’t share and even thinking about what I did and didn’t share. This is something I’m interested in in my writing practice. Thinking about abstraction, legibility, and so on. Really having to address that in the space was both challenging and something I learned a lot from and will take with me.  

There was close work with the artists and a lot of making sure we were aligned and on the same page and that I could support them. Instead of having written labels in the space, I was trying to think of how to approach that problem of spatially designing labels but also giving the artists say in what they share. My curatorial mentor for the project, Kalyn Fay Barnoski, suggested we do audio labels and that wound up being a beautiful way to do it. If you listen to them online, they all just put their own spin on it. Some of them give a lot of information, like a full introduction to their family, where they’re from, what’s going on in the work. And some just say this is what it is.  

I love that so much.  It’s really important to give artists the space to say what they need to say but also to choose when they don’t want to say as much…when something is more personal. That was a challenge. Just figuring out when you’re working with these stories, how do you do that responsibly. And for me in the process, what it looked like was giving the artists the final say about what they share and how they share it.” 

Q5: Can you speak about any Indigenous curatorial practices that you used for this show? 

Lois: “ A big one that comes to mind is hospitality. A precursor to that, relationship building. Like I said, I knew Renee beforehand. My family knew Zoey beforehand. So, there were these connections. But just making the time to talk to people, not rushing the process and letting relationships develop at its own pace was so important. That looked different with each of the artists. A big part of relationship building is that flexibility and willingness to honor the needs of the artists and be a partner to them in the process.  

Through that hospitality, making sure that when the artists came for the opening that they were well taken care of. That we were feeding them and housing them, hanging out with them and having fun and laughs. Making sure that they felt comfortable with the way their work is showing up in the space.  

Then culturally specific practices too like offering tobacco. There was many situations around shipping and arranging things in the space, including medicines in the space that were able to be so flexible with and open with and make adjustments based on what was needed.  

Q6: What are you hoping audiences will take away from this exhibition? 

Lois: “With exhibitions and looking at art, you can never know for sure what people will take away and you can never convey things in a way where there is a straight line as to what people will bring with them.  

I like to think about it as opening doorways. And I hope with this show I can open a doorway into the richness of Anishinaabe culture, art, and philosophy. Ways of thinking about the world and also opening doors for how we think about ambiguity, paradox and what it means to live in balance in the day to day through our actions, through the way we treat each other and the world around us.” 

Gagizhibaajiwan is on view at the Center for Native Futures through December 14, 2024.