In each issue, Broken Pencil asks an artist to curate Folio — a section highlighting creators working in unexpected media and materials. This edition is curated by Ange Loft, a multidisciplinary performing artist, Associate Artistic Director of Jumblies Theatre and vocalist with Yamantaka//Sonic Titan.
Aanmitagzi creates dance, theatre and cross-disciplinary arts with both professional and community artists. Recently, they created a new interactive work for Toronto’s Nuit Blanche which took place along Bay Street at the end of September.
“Serpent People” is a performance and installation that carries personal narratives woven into the Indigenous regional myth about transformation after eating the black sturgeon on a particular island on Lake Nipissing. Oral history, archived research, artist reflections, and three years of hands on community development around themes of hunger, desire, shame and beauty is brought to life by co-founders, Penny Couchie and Sid Bobb with Spiderwoman Theatre’s Muriel Miguel. Lead designer, Meg Paulin, and a team of emerging artists patch together a cryptic narrative skimming images and documents of land and resource dispossession, uranium mining and fish anatomy; inviting audience art-based response in an evolving reflection on over-arching theme of need. These images come from their process.
Based out of Big Medicine Studio, Aanmitaagzi is a vital creative leader in cross-disciplinary aboriginal arts and are making big waves by providing a platform for the thriving arts community in Nipissing First Nation and North Bay.
