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- please remove your shoes
- Hearth
- When Is Future? When Is Now?
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please remove your shoes (2022)
porcupine quills, glue, coir mat
9 x 90 x 60 cm
City of Ottawa Art Collection, 2023-0003
The porcupine’s quills provide a layer of protection against predators, increasing their chance of survival from attack. Indigenous peoples use these same gifts to adorn ourselves with quilled jewelry and regalia. When processed by skilled artists, the sharp quills can be transformed into florals, geometric motifs, and other meaningful designs, where they become carriers of story and protection in a renewed form. In please remove your shoes we honour these materials with their sharpness still intact, spelling out the word ‘WELCOME’. Our people have always been welcoming to newcomers, yet after hundreds of years of colonial violence we have learned from our porcupine relatives to always protect our most vulnerable, including those who may not be deemed “welcome” in certain spaces. please remove your shoes asks viewers to consider their understandings of care, guest and host protocols, notions of home, and power and vulnerability, and acts as a poignant reminder to walk gently.
Commission for ‘Welcome Back Project,’ curated by Christos Pantieras, Third Way Creative and the City of Ottawa