Postcommodity: Time Holds All the Answers opens at Remai Modern
For immediate release — September 15, 2021
SASKATOON, CANADA — Remai Modern is honoured to present Time Holds All the Answers, a new exhibition by Postcommodity, curated by Dr. Gerald McMaster. Comprised almost entirely of new work, the exhibition includes architecturally-scaled sculpture, immersive multi-media installations, and sound and text-based pieces. It is Postcommodity’s most significant museum presentation to date.
“Postcommodity establishes a new level of excellence with this exhibition that we are most fortunate to launch here on the Prairies. They have delivered a fresh way of thinking about art and Indigenous artistic practice,” said McMaster.
This exhibition is the culmination of a long-standing friendship and critical dialogue between curator McMaster and Postcommodity. Their work together is grounded in mutual respect for the Indigenous communities and lands they are connected to. McMaster is nêhiyaw (Plains Cree) from the Red Pheasant Cree Nation and a member of the Siksika Nation. Cristóbal Martinez is Mestizo of the Genizaro, Pueblo, Manito, and Chicano heritages of Northern New Mexico. Kade L. Twist is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.
Time Holds All the Answers takes on subjects including environmental crises, Indigenous sovereignty and land stewardship, the forces of capitalism, and the mythologies of modern art and architecture. In sharing their work in Treaty 6 Territory and the Homeland of the Métis, Postcommodity recognize how Indigenous people, stories and art forms have long travelled between the south and the north, since time immemorial.
Postcommodity use hacking as a creative strategy, taking existing objects and systems and breaking them apart to modify their original purpose. Through hacking, Postcommodity approach sites of conflict as places of curiosity, where multiple realities exist in tension. Something can be at once harmful and healing, terrifying and beautiful, inside and beyond.
Works are situated throughout Remai Modern, including the Marquee and Feature galleries on Level 3, as well as unexpected spaces throughout the building. The artists consider the entire museum as a site where their concept of “re-imagined ceremony” takes shape. Ceremony is usually associated with religious or spiritual rituals and gatherings that celebrate particular events. In Postcommodity’s approach, the museum becomes an immersive environment, with careful attention to where and how artworks are encountered and moved through. Visitors are welcomed into a space of exchange, where meaning can be created together from a place of shared respect and responsibility.
Time Holds All the Answers opens September 18, 2021, and will be on view through January 23, 2022. The exhibition will be accompanying by a comprehensive monograph, published later this year.
An opening celebration, including a live performance by Postcommodity, will take place at Remai Modern on September 16 from 6:30-10 PM. Admission is by donation and all are welcome. A conversation between the artists and curator will be hosted at the museum on September 18 at 1 PM, and will be accessible via a livestream on Zoom. Visit remaimodern.org/postcommodity to register and learn more.
About Postcommodity
Postcommodity is an interdisciplinary arts collective, currently comprised of Cristóbal Martínez and Kade L. Twist. They create works of art through a shared Indigenous lens and voice, examining aspects of 21st-century life to inspire a uniquely Indigenous vision of the future. Using provocation as a tool, they spark constructive conversations that challenge the social, political and economic processes that destabilize communities and geographies.
Cristóbal Martínez is Mestizo of the Genizaro, Pueblo, Manito, and Chicano heritages of Northern New Mexico, and grew up in Alcalde, NM. Martínez is an interdisciplinary artist and indigenous media scholar. In 2003, he co-founded the artist-hacker performance ensemble Radio Healer. In 2009, he collaborated with Postcommodity, and became a member of the collective in 2010. In 2018, he co-founded the experimental electronic music group Red Culebra. Drawing a continuum to his art practices, Martínez is Chair and Associate Professor of Art and Technology at the San Francisco Art Institute. In 2015, Martínez earned his doctorate from Arizona State University in Rhetoric, Composition, and Linguistics after completing his dissertation on Indigenous Technological Sovereignty.
Kade L. Twist is a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and grew up in Bakersfield, California. Twist is an interdisciplinary artist, poet and co-founding member of Postcommodity. Twist is a 2015 US Artist Klein Fellow for Visual Arts, recipient of the 2007 Native Writers Circle of the Americas First Book Award for Amazing Grace, and recently published the book-length poem Marginal Equity with Publication Studio Guelph in 2018. In addition to his creative practice, Twist is a professor in the MFA Fine Arts Department at Otis College of Art and Design, in Los Angeles, and a recent retiree from the field of public policy where he specialized in American Indian technology, health care and community development for nearly 20 years.
About Gerald McMaster
Dr. Gerald McMaster is a leading voice internationally, with over 30 years of experience in contemporary art, critical theory, museology and Indigenous aesthetics. McMaster serves as Adjunct Curator for Remai Modern, and is Director of the Wapatah Centre for Indigenous Visual Knowledge at OCAD University. Wapatah is a hub for facilitating the documentation, communication and interpretation of Indigenous ways of seeing. Drawing on the inseparable concepts of perception and knowing, Wapatah assists Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists and researchers to collaborate on the engagement with and representation of artistic knowledge. The Wapatah team has worked closely with Remai Modern on all aspects of Time Holds All the Answers.
About Remai Modern
Remai Modern is situated on Treaty 6 Territory and the Traditional Homeland of the Métis. We pay our respects to First Nations and Métis ancestors and reaffirm our relationship with one another. Remai Modern is a new museum of modern and contemporary art in Saskatoon.
Remai Modern would like to acknowledge the contributions of the Frank & Ellen Remai Foundation, the Canada Council for the Arts, SaskCulture through the Sask Lotteries Fund, SK Arts and the City of Saskatoon.
Remai Modern would like to acknowledge the support of Braid Flooring for Time Holds All the Answers.
For additional information contact:
Stephanie McKay
Communications Manager, Remai Modern
306.975.2242
smckay@remaimodern.org