Lan𐓈𐒰͘𐓈𐒰 Docupoetics: Queering Cahokia

This pop-up exhibition will feature work by artists Alex DeRoin and Veronica Pipestem, drawn from ongoing bodies of work on “landcestry,” tracing the ways ancestral biomes have shaped the physical bodies of contemporary Native people across time and distance, and “Lan𐓈𐒰͘𐓈𐒰,” which combines Landback and Dadaist principles to challenge colonialism, capitalism, and oppression. The evening will feature a reading by DeRoin and an optional workshop to improvisationally create Lan𐓈𐒰͘𐓈𐒰 texts.

Artist statement: Queering Cahokia is about documenting important shifts through the medium of Dadaist Poetics. To challenge Western, Heteropatriarchal, and male-dominated assumptions that have been used to interpret the ancient Mississippian city of Cahokia. Using Queer Ecologies to apply to botany of the Mississippian World. Turns these assumptions on their head, because indigenous epistemologies look directly to the natural world to decipher the “Natural Order” of life. The surrounding environment of Cahokia is a living text, that reorients the conversation to accept the fact that Nature is inherently queer.