A Tahltan performance artist Peter Morin interacted with installation of the Rukai nation sculptor Eleng Luluan

Land.Breath by Peter Morin

Peter Morin, a Tahltan Nation performance artist, activist and scholar. He makes performance art in the tradition of Tahltan Art History. His work is a part of the continuum of performance art that has happened with their territory, and within these Indigenous territories since the beginning. 

The piece was created for John Hampton's exhibition In Dialogue (2017). The exhibition toured to different venues and he responded to each space in the performance. The Land.Breath was designed to consider the body and its moment to Indigenous territories. At times I was very 'literal' in considering dialogues and how bodies come into contact with each other and because of that contact how are we shifted and changed. I was also considering how each Indigenous artwork is actually a village, or a collective of Indigenous bodies. 

The question for him, continues to be, what does it mean to be a guest on these territories? I was also attempting to deeply consider the framework - his survival is intrinsically tied to their survival (a Tahltan idea), which could also be understood as relationally. 

Photo credit: National Gallery of Canada