Land Akin

Land Akin features BIPOC artists who are making work through embodied practices that convey cultural ways of knowing by engaging deep connections with land and place. Their work challenges us to reenvision our relationship to the land from a decolonial perspective. In this exhibition, kinship operates as a joining dynamic that aligns decolonial views of race and ecology, attempting to subvert the western capitalist mentality of land as property to be owned, conquered, or exploited for its natural resources. Instead, Land Akin advocates for a reimagining of the land as family or ancestry, to be respected and treated with reverence. Learning to foster our relationship with the natural world is a strategy for developing kinship among ourselves as people who share the earth, and ultimately, for recognizing that we are all part of nature. Contending with the generational trauma of colonialism, the artists in this exhibition employ hybrid artistic modes that emerge from the tactics of resilience and adaptation often mirrored in the impacted landscapes they are from. Their work shares an investment in remaking a vision of ecological, Black, Brown, and Indigenous futures, where fragmented and intersectional modes of cultural knowledge can be rebuilt, embodied, and revived.