Sinuosity | Ts̱ēmā Igharas and Jeneen Frei Njootli
Braiding
weaving
sisterhood
flagging tape
Moccasins. Twindian. navigating the Bush, tangled hair, resource extraction. skip.
What does it mean to add these pieces into ourselves?
Red// orange// stripes //pink// blue //warning. Fluorescent hair wrapping northern bodies bound by landscape, immemorial roots—blood memory dissolves after long, almost silent Subtle Sounds of zips between finger tips is broken by laughter.Hunting knife cuts and pulls knowledge through our bodies.
Ten foot braids. Transcends 40 feet of learning.
Sinuosity activates Indigenous rhythms of urban sound through a collaborative durational performative art action and (new) media installation. Jeneen Frei Njootli and Ts̱ēmā Igharas braid fluorescent flagging tape extending two bodies as a playful act of kinship, a connection to ancestral memory, and a protest against ongoing resource extraction in their territories and beyond.
Flagging tape is deeply entangled in late capitalism and is iconic in both pristine landscapes and in cities. Its presence is most often indicative of extractive change, however flagging tape is also used in Indigenous communities to mark trails for safe passage through territories and to bind medicinal plants. In Sinuosity, the flagging tape becomes a lifeline—a connection to ancestral memory, land, and kinship. This mix of technology forces us to ask: how do we pull knowledge through the body and how is that knowledge activated in another’s lands? How do sets of geopolitics differ?
How do they move?Sound?
Skip?
Break?
Mend and mark?
Sinuosity
June 13, 2019 | Mexico City
When the performance in Mexico City begins, Frei Njootli and Igharas meet face to face in the street to perform Sinuosity outdoors for the first time. The artists’ coveralls act as toolkits and as mobile amplifiers for the performance. Each suit is printed with custom patterns of their respective home territories: a Tahltan obsidian quarry on Mount Edziza and an aerial image of animal tracks in Crow Flats cover the artists’ bodies. Wearing utility belts that carry rolls of flagging tape and a bag of rope, the artists braid. A contact microphone is attached to Frei Njootli’s hand allowing the audience to hear the sounds of the braids as they extend the length of the artists’ hair with flagging tape and rope.
The womxn bring forth multiple concepts embedded within flagging tape by connecting it to their body and testing the material potential of the tape through transformation, stretching, wrapping, and singing their braids into existence. The braids, once reaching 10ft or more, finally become skipping ropes and the public are invited to skip between them. Their bodies, the soundscape, the skipping ropes are all decolonial tools. Sinuosity is a decolonial machine. The work is complete when the artists liberate themselves from the braids by cutting each other’s hair with a knife.
All images: Ts̱ēmā Igharas and Jeneen Frei Njootli, Sinuosity (2019). Photo: Jonathan Igharas. Courtesy of the artists and Jonathan Igharas.
Notes on contributors
Jeneen Frei Njootli and Ts̱ēmā Igharas are award-winning Northern Indigenous interdisciplinary artists who create work to connect materials and bodies to the land. Both members of the ReMatriate Collective, friendship and collaboration has led them to their joint performance Sinuosity.