Indigenous worldviews have always been aligned with notions of interconnectedness and recognition of the elements of the land–such as stones and mountains–as ancestors with intelligence and wisdom. In her book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Robin Wall Kimmerer (mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation) reflects on language as a realm for shaping imagination and possibility; where the English language sets up divisions between humans and objects, which are then assigned gender or animacy. These divisions are often hierarchical. 

What is the role of art as a language, and how can it serve as an instrument to invoke other ways of being, thinking, and acting, leading to a reorientation in the relationships between species, people, and spirits? Can art and artists create a space to initiate conversations on the impulse of meaning and community?

This exhibition, "The Grammar of Animacy," takes its title from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s chapter and is a collaboration between SUPERCOLLIDER and Idyllwild Arts and will bring together the work of nine artists who strive to challenge Western myths and cultivate visions that intertwine embodiment, queer mythologies, indigenous modes of knowing, and ethical relationships with ecology and technology.