Lindsay Katsitsakatste Delaronde
“All creation in our universe and on planet earth, human and non-human beings come from one host, the host of consciousness. Consciousness is the host for our soul and our soul is then hosted within our earth bodies. Our earth bodies then become hosted by the land and waters we are born in/on.”
—Lindsay Katsitsakaste Delaronde
The Bonavista Biennale is presenting two new works by Lindsay Katsitsakaste Delaronde: a movement performance, Sturgeon Woman Rising, and a video piece, Gemini: TEHNIKHEN (Twins).
Sturgeon Woman Rising draws upon the livelihood of the sturgeon, an ancient being that has maintained its survivance across many bodies of water for over 200 million years. Atlantic Sturgeon populations, which are currently threatened, range from the St. Lawrence River to Western Newfoundland and up the coast of Labrador. The performance will take place both in the water and on the land, incorporating movement, breath and sound.
Gemini: TEHNIKHEN (Twins) is a film of a land-based ritual performance that expresses a perspective of the artist’s birth natal chart and their relationship to the astrological sign of the twins. The study of a natal chart creates a compass which can lead to a better understanding of emotions, relationships, connections, actions, boundaries and abundance. Mapping the cosmology of a natal chart and grounding in this celestial knowledge supports deep spiritual insights of human sovereign nature. Delaronde’s sublime, laborious and cognizant performance collapses the physical, spiritual and mental into emotional gestures and cathartic actions that bring together aspects of land-based connections of belonging and responsible stewardship, enabling her body and soul to become aligned to (a) place(s) of inheritance.
Sturgeon Woman Rising is co-commissioned by Bonavista Biennale and MOMENTA Biennale de l’image, and Gemini: TEHNIKHEN (Twins) is commissioned by MOMENTA Biennale de l’image. Both works will be also be presented as part of MOMENTA Biennale de l’image in Montreal (September 7 – October 22, 2023).
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Lindsay Katsitsakatste Delaronde is Kanienke’haka from Kahnawake. She hold a Master’s degree in Fine Arts and a Master of Arts in the Indigenous Communities Counseling Psychology Program from the University of Victoria, where she is currently enrolled as a PhD student in the Applied Theatre program. Delaronde’s artistic practice focuses on Indigenous theatre, land-based dramaturgy, eco-somatics, site-specific performance art, and co-creative collaborative practice. Her artistic philosophy is grounded within Indigenous aesthetics and influenced and shaped by her Haudenosaunee epistemologies and natural law. Delaronde’s solo and community projects explore socio-political relationships to land, body, cosmos, identity, Indigenous sovereignty and Indigenous feminisms, forging artistic pathways towards a liberatory existence for self-actualization and self-determination.