i. Orientation

I live in two lands at once. 

My body resides on the territories of the Lekwungen People, the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations, and grew and formed on the territories of the T’Souke Nation. I know these places intimately, but severed from their histories because of colonialism. I do not know them through the languages that formed alongside them, or the stories that describe certain mountains or trees, rock outcroppings and the way the sea comes tumbling in on a storm. These are the ways I long to know them, but I have to balance this longing with an understanding that they may not be mine to learn.

My orientation to the world, all worlds, is through the second land, of the Scottish highlands and islands. And though I have spent less time there, these are the stories I have learned myself through. How the hills become a canvas for the sky to brush with shadows of cloud and spears of sunlight; how the cold cold sea will swallow and boil, but protect you in flight from those unknown of the dwellings. I know the lands through the names I’ve been given, and through the stories they bear. I don’t know the language of this place either, but I feel adjacent to it, as though all of its sensibilities are held inside me, but ever so slightly out of reach.

And these two together form a strange pairing, with stories that straddle thousands of miles and land in my body as I cross a stream or wander deep in the rainforest, where I know the unknown wights and the tales of the selkie or each-uisge aren’t of here, but I hold the possibility when the seal surfaces to greet me and we sit together for a while.

Perhaps this is where Cailleach-oidhche crosses these worlds, because she belongs in both, too. Or maybe she came to us as she did to bring you safely across the thresholds.

*

In many Indigenous cosmologies (both Turtle Island and elsewhere), time is measured in relationships, by ancestors before and to come. Time is measured through story, the passing of knowledge from Elders to students who one day hope to become Elders. I heard an Elder share once that he was a student for forty years. But in this concept of time, time is always both cyclical and extending.

In Celtic cosmologies time is a wheel with no beginning or ending, an infinity cycling onto itself. Each year brings the seasons and the rituals that accompany them, and in this way time is certain and present. What this means though, is that the living and the dead are always grappling for the same space, arriving and departing in unison, and this bears complexities of its own.

[excerpt from Measure of Stillness, 2022-2024]

~

I was born and grew up on the territories of the T’Souke Nation and the lək̓ʷəŋən People. It was there in part that I formed my identity in context of place and ways of being learned through it. I now live, create, write and participate as an uninvited inhabitant on the territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən People, including the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations.

Education

Exhibitions & Residencies

2022
Seal-mara (Intertidal), solo exhibition. Fifty Fifty Arts Collective. Victoria, Canada

Fibreworks 2022. Cambridge Art Galleries. Cambridge, Canada.

BMK Residency. March-April 2022. Victoria, Canada.

2021
Proof 27. Gallery 44. Toronto, Canada.

Fata Morgana. Belkin Art Gallery. Vancouver, Canada.

Magic Lantern VIII. Magic Lantern x Closet Gallery. Montreal, Canada.

2020
Coordination Complex (diagram enclosed). AHVA Gallery. UBC. Vancouver, Canada.

The Lind Prize 2020, Shortlist Exhibition. The Polygon Gallery. Vancouver, Canada.

2019
Loud. Ok Cool. Gallery Parfois. Montreal, Canada.

Sites of Embodied Silence. Art Matters Festival x Art Souterrain. VAV Gallery. Montreal, Canada.

Would You Bury Me. Art Matters Festival x Nuit Blanche. Fonderie Darling. Montreal, Canada.

2018
Corrupted Portal. VAV Gallery. Montreal, Canada.

Eulogy of Gravity (solo exhibition). the Ou Gallery. Duncan, Canada.

2017
Rêverie (Curators: Julie Côté and Joani Tremblay). Projet Pangée. Montreal, Canada. (photography and poetry).

Ontology. Art Matters Festival. Espace Projet. Montreal, Canada. (curator).

2014
Spectres: Women in Art. Off-site. Victoria, Canada.

2012
Thought Fox Arts Collective. Off-site, Edinburgh College of Art. Edinburgh, UK.

Publications

2021
Magic Lantern VIII photobook. Print. Magic Lantern. Montreal, Canada.

2019
Loud. Ok Cool Editions. Print, zine. https://okcooleditions.storenvy.com/products/26135748-loud. (photography).

2018
“FRIDAY SUBMISSION: FOUR PHASES OF THE SALT MOON BY XAN SHIAN.” Lamono Magazine. https://www.lamonomagazine.com/friday-submission-four-phases-of-the-salt-moon-byxan-shian/. (photography).

Spill. The Void Magazine. Winter 2018. p. 1, 64. (photography).

Clicks (group publication). The Concordia Photo Collective (CPC). Photobook, print edition. (photography).

2017
The Far Off Blue Places. Projet Pangée. http://projetpangee-en.com/anjuli-rathod-vanessabrown/. (exhibition text).

Artist Feature. Stolen Ground Publishing. online pub. July 2017. (photography).

Ontology. Folca Press. Chapbook. (photography and poetry).

2016
2 Poems, Omega blog, Metatron. (poetry).

2015
Threshold. Leaf Press, 2015. Chapbook, with poems by Marilyn Bowering. (photography).

2012
The God Poems, with Leon Rooke. Words and Art: Commentary by Marilyn Bowering. The Exile Quarterly, Vol. 35. No. 3. 2012. (photography).

2012  Five Poems and an Interview with John Vardon. The New Quarterly, Issue 121. 2012. (photography).

Cover photograph. The Warwick Review, Vol. V. No. 4. (photography).

2011
Shian, Xan. Mini Series. The Void Magazine, vol. 10, no. 1. Winter, 2012. p. 18. Concordia University. (photography).

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