Thinking Spaces: The Reading Group and Speaker Series, together with the Art Gallery of Guelph, is pleased to present “Dispatch” a virtual talk with artist Raven Chacon and curator Candice Hopkins.

Dispatch draws from Chacon and Hopkins’ reflections on the fight for cultural preservation and defence of Indigenous sovereignty at the Standing Rock Reservation Water Protector encampment in 2016.

This event will take place on Zoom. A moderated Q&A will follow the talk.

If you are interested in attending, please register online at https://uoguel.ph/dispatch.

About the presenters

Raven Chacon is a composer, performer and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. As a solo artist, collaborator or with Postcommodity, Chacon has exhibited or performed at Whitney Biennial, documenta 14, REDCAT, Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Chaco Canyon, Ende Tymes Festival, 18th Biennale of Sydney and The Kennedy Center. Every year, he teaches 20 students to write string quartets for the Native American Composer Apprenticeship Project (NACAP). He is the recipient of the United States Artists fellowship in Music, the Creative Capital award in Visual Arts, the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation artist fellowship, and the American Academy’s Berlin Prize for Music Composition. He lives in Albuquerque, NM.

Candice Hopkins is a citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation and lives in Albuquerque, NM. Her writing and curatorial practice explores the intersections of history, contemporary art and indigeneity. She works as senior curator for the 2019 and 2021 editions of the Toronto Biennial of Art and was part of the curatorial team for the Canadian Pavilion of the 58th Venice Biennale, featuring the work of the media art collective Isuma. She is co-curator of notable exhibitions including Art for New Understanding: Native Voices 1950s to Now; the 2018 SITE Santa Fe biennial, Casa Tomada; documenta 14 in Athens, Greece and Kassel, Germany; Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Canada and Close Encounters: The Next 500 Years in Winnipeg, MB. Her recent essays and presentations include “The Gilded Gaze: Wealth and Economies on the Colonial Frontier,” for the documenta 14 Reader, and “Outlawed Social Life” for South as a State of Mind.

As always, Thinking Spaces is free and open to all