Bimiwetigweyaa — Tcubúhatceh
(The Sound the River Makes Flowing Along — The Ripple and Roar of a Flowing Stream)

Target Studio for Creative Collaboration

Bimiwetigweyaa (Ojibwe) pronounced:

 

Tcubúhatceh (Uma) pronounced: Tcoo-booo-ha-cheh

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It is one thing to know about a river, and yet another altogether to consider the river itself as a way of knowing. The Big River Continuum is a Mississippi-long artist residency exchange that amplifies the interconnectedness of cultures, research, water and land through collaboration between the multimedia artist Karen Goulet (White Earth Ojibwe) from the Mississippi Headwaters region, and social practice artist Monique Verdin (Houma) from the Delta. Over the past three years, the artists have been exchanging visits and having conversations about ways in which the Big River, or Misi Ziibi Headwaters and Delta have been in conversation with each other for thousands of years.

This in-progress exhibition, organized by guest curator Rebecca Dallinger, on view in the Weisman’s Target Studio gallery will showcase the collaborative creative explorations of the artists thus far in the process through works in diverse media, as well as the documentation of their creative collaboration with the partners at the Itasca Biological Station and artists of Northern Minnesota and Yakni Chitto.

 

The summer 2022 exhibition in the Weisman’s Target Studio gallery coincides with Goulet and Verdin’s exhibition of additional work-in-progress from the Big River Continuum residency, on view at the Watermark Art Center in Bemidji, MN.

KAREN E. GOULET is a multimedia artist often working with textiles and written word. She is a White Earth Ojibwe Band member and is also from Metis and Sami/Finn people. Her work is informed by her experiences, the people she is from and places she loves.  She received her MFA in sculpture from UW-Madison and an MEd from UM Duluth and has been exhibiting nationally and internationally for 25 years. She is the Program Director for the Miikanan Gallery at the Watermark Art Center in Bemidji, MN working as a community change maker through her creative practices.

 

MONIQUE VERDIN is a multidisciplinary artist responding to the complex interconnectedness of environment, economics, culture, climate, and change along the Gulf South. Her indigenous Houma relatives and their life-ways have been the primary focus of her storytelling practice. Monique is the director of The Land Memory Bank &  Exchange, a part of the Another Gulf Is Possible Collaborative, co-producer/subject of the documentary My Louisiana Love and co-author of Return to Yakni Chitto; Houma Migrations.

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Image credits: (Left) – L: Karen Goulet, “When Women Gather” and “Aerial Memory,” details from two pieces in the Unfinished Business series, 2022. Mixed fibers and stitchery, 11 x 11 in. The series as a whole is reminiscent of a ceremony blanket, composed of hand-sewn squares the artist likens to “memory maps of events, observations and dreams I have had while on this Misi Ziibi creative journey.” R: Monique Verdin, Louisiana Lost Treasure Map : Bayou DuLarge : Janie Luster, 2022. Inkjet print, 36 x 24 in. Images courtesy of the artists.  (Middle) Monique Verdin, ReIndigenized 1861 Mississippi Watershed Map. The basins of the Mississippi and tributaries, their systems of drainage and downfall.  Original map, [Washington] Corps of Top’l. Eng’rs., U.S.A, Library of Congress. Courtesy of the artist.