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Then A Cunning Voice Quilt Exhibition


  • Abrons Arts Center 466 Grand Street New York, NY 10002 USA (map)

Then A Cunning Voice...is rooted in community visioning sessions created in partnership with the Minneapolis -based Native American Community Development Institute. The visioning sessions start with the questions,

“What do you want for your well-­being? For your family and friends? Your neighborhood? Your city, town, or reserve?” 

The responses generate joy, reflection, responsibility:

I want my city to love itself more.
The Mayor of Richfield wants free mental health clinics.
Someone writes “A full happy life for our son”

The intentions are gathered on quilt squares which are sewn into a modular series of quilts during community sewing bees. Once created, the quilts are laid together to become one 4,000 square foot area, designed by textile artist Maggie Thompson, upon which we will host all night stargazing including moments of silence, performance, stories, and First-Nations star knowledge. We want to share time, to feel and also imagine the space below us on the ground and above us in the air. 

Earlier Event: August 19
World Premiere of Then A Cunning Voice and A Night We Spend Gazing At Stars
Later Event: September 6
Then A Cunning Voice... Exhibition Reception
Office, Minneapolis, MN, US612.597.7400emily@catalystdance.com

Emily Johnson / Catalyst is based on Mannahatta in Lenapehoking. We work to pay respect to Lenape homeland, people and ancestors past, present, and future by organizing with communities from the Lenape diaspora to build pathways for Lenapeyok return. We have been taught to name Lenape Nations and say cama’i to our relatives from Delaware Tribe of Indians in Bartlesville, OK; Delaware Nation of Oklahoma in Anadarko, OK; Stockbridge-Munsee and Mohican Community in Wisconsin; Moravian Delaware of the Thames in Ontario, Canada; Munsee-Delaware Nation at Munceytown in Ontario, Canada; Delaware of Six Nations in Ontario, Canada. 

We strive to be in good relations with our kin—human and more than human—and in effort to support growing kinstillatory relations and sovereign, liberated futures we are anti-colonial and abolitionist in all capacities. We are committed to on-the-ground water and land protection, consistent decolonization work, and Land Back. 

Quyanaqvaa-lli elpeni to all Sovereign Nations, Indigenous and First Nations people who live in relation to and from Lenapehoking and upon whose lands we work and tour.

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