When Krista Belle Stewart’s (b. 1979 in Syilx Nation; lives and works between Berlin and Vienna) mother gifted her a piece of land within the Syilx Nation, the artist wondered what it meant to own land. Living nearby in Vancouver at the time, Stewart took a suitcase full of this earth and carried it with her while driving or walking around the city, reflecting on how one might “carry the land.”
For the 58th Carnegie International, Stewart presents a mural and a series of capsules created with clay from her native Syilx Nation. For the mural, she creates the pigment by crushing ceramic tiles and then mixing this powder with water and glycerin. The material that comes from this ground is a living index of its inhabitants before the arrival of European settlers and continues to be a site for anti-colonial and environmental struggles for justice. The work presented in the exhibition carries these histories across the borders that divide them and expands on the artist’s engagement with the land, the most primordial living archive.
