K. Jake Chakasim
“Hostages in our own homeland. That is what I feel, hear, and see when it comes to the Indigenous story of Canada. There is no common ground. There is no new found land. Politically displaced, extracted, and contained—shipped off to foreign sites of assembly—the line separating the Indigenous from the diaspora has not only thickened but it has undergone a state of change. From the ephemeral to the natural, the natural to the synthetic—we have become universal plastic Indians.”
—K. Jake Chakasim
Host(age) is a newly commissioned site-responsive structural installation by architect designer K. Jake Chakasim. Made with industrial materials such as PVC tubing, plastic pallets and threaded steel rods, the structure incorporates formal, conceptual and historic references to archaeological evidence of Beothuck dwellings, outport fish flakes, and ship holds peppered, seen and unseen, across the Bonavista Peninsula. By recognizing the extent of the “build” around these coastlines, Chakasim is interested in activating the work through a charged socio-political lens. Amalgamated together as an identifiable shelter/structure, Chakisim’s work tugs on several facets of the national “land back” movement to address the presence and absence of original peoples coast to coast, as well as amplifying provincial Black histories to carry and acknowledge a subdued narrative forward. Host(age) is built from a place of invisible evidence.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
K. Jake Chakasim is a Cree from the Mushkegowuk Territory situated in Northern Ontario, also known as Treaty 9 or the James Bay Treaty. His interdisciplinary approach to community design is informed by architecture, engineering and Indigenous planning principles. Chakasim is an active member of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada’s Indigenous Task Force and is currently involved with the development of a National Architecture Policy for Canada that centralizes the valued inclusion of Canada’s Indigenous peoples’ presence, livelihood and wellbeing across the built environment.
Chakasim is currently a Doctoral Candidate with UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning, cross-appointed with Carleton’s School of Indigenous & Canadian Studies. Chakasim was a contributing artist to the exhibition 41° to 66° Architecture in Canada: Region, Culture and Tectonics at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2008, was part of the design team for UNCEDED: Voices of the Land at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, and is a collaborating artist/writer for the US Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2023, under the theme Everlasting Plastics—a project that examines the omnipresence of plastics and our fraught relationship with the material.