A conversation with artist Olivia Whetung

e yaayaaN: where I am located—aaniish e kidayin: how do you say it?
a conversation with artist Olivia Whetung

Oct. 27, 1pm
Aboriginal Gathering Place
All welcome

Olivia Whetung is a Mississauga-Anishinaabe artist, who was born in Peterborough, ON. Raised with strong ties to her family in Curve Lake First Nation, but with limited access to the Anishinaabe language, Whetung is engaged in the process of reclaiming the language in her own life. She completed her BFA at Algoma University in Sault Ste. Marie, ON with a minor in Anishinaabemowin, and is currently enrolled in the MFA in Visual Art at UBC Vancouver. Whetung works primarily in printmaking, digital media, and beadwork, and her work explores issues of loss, entropy, translation, and access—particularly the limited access Indigenous people in Canada often have to their own languages. Her current projects consider the performative nature of language and its connectedness to life practices in Anishinaabe ways of being.

ᐄ/ii is a component of a sound inventory project which Whetung is currently undertaking. The image is an application used by linguists to analyze sounds,and represents the ii sound as pronounced and recorded by the artist.