Untitled Performance

Tanya Lukin Linklater, North Bay (ON, Canada)

In 2009 the artist began researching specific historical events that affected the Alutiiq of Kodiak Island, Alaska. This research has compelled her to build a body of work that investigates specific histories in relation to the present moment.

This untitled performance at Mapping Resistances in 2010, was a response to Wanda Nanibush’s curatorial focus on the 20th anniversary of the Oka resistance. Through the lens of my research into Alutiiq history, I performed a poetic, meditative process of locating, excavating and tracing memory in the body through a series of actions that recall generations of Alutiiq women. 

Artist Bio

Tanya Lukin Linklater originates from the Native Villages of Port Lions and Afognak in the Kodiak archipelago of southwestern Alaska. Based in northern Ontario, her practice spans experimental choreography, performance, installation, text, photo-based works, and video. Her works have been performed/exhibited at Latitude 53’s Visualeyez (Edmonton), grunt gallery (Vancouver), Culver Center of the Arts (California), and elsewhere. She studied at University of Alberta (M.Ed. 2003) and Stanford University (A.B. Honours 1998), where she received the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship & Louis Sudler Prize in Creative and Performing Arts. Tanya was awarded the Chalmers Professional Development Grant in 2010 and nominated for the K.M. Hunter Artist Award in Dance in 2011. Her work has been generously supported by Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts.

---