The High Commission of Canada’s work supports Canadian artists in the UK, connecting British audiences with some of the best and brightest Canadian and Indigenous talent. These are artists whose work tackles some of the most important issues of our day, such as gender equality, climate change and representation in the arts.
Livia Filotico is a creative director and curator of stories living between Rome and London and working at the intersection between culture and communication. She holds a degree in social anthropology from Goldsmiths University and both anthropological theory and ethnographic research are still at the heart of her work. Livia creates and directs cultural moments such as Moon Festival, award winning training programmes such as The Night School (championed by the Mayor’s Office) and TellYours (supported by Arts Council England, Words of Colour and BBC Writers Room), and successful communications campaigns across digital and print. Her clients and collaborators include author Margaret Atwood, Arts Council England, the National Heritage Lottery Fund, The High Commission of Canada in the UK and the Royal Museums in Greenwich.
“When I design spiritual centres for indigenous people, I always try to bring the moon into my designs because we are a maternal culture and the moon is the foundation of our beliefs and our connection to the land. A case in point is the Museum of Washington. When I was working on the museum, I felt very strongly about bringing not only the sun but also the moon into the design, as this would reinforce the teachings of the grandmothers. So I chartered all the phases of the moon according to where they could enter the building with the goal of using the circular space on the 4th floor of the museum for moon ceremonies. But the commissioners were very intimidated by that, so much so that they fired me, fired the elders working on the project, and got another architect to come in and redesign the building. Then David Rockefeller intervened and said the new architect had to use my designs, which he did. But he left all the most important spiritual aspects out, including the mapping of the moon phases. He followed my designs but took the soul out of the building. The sun brings life, sure, but we are also profoundly influenced by the moon. I can confidently say that I am bound and determined to weave its phases and its association with women into my designs.
Of the two stunning works below, Boyle says: “Hans Cristian Anderson’s mermaid retreats to a cave deep beneath the sea, completing the cycle of life before she ages into death. Aquatic chimeras join fins around an Arctic seal-hole: supplicants to the Supemoon. Silence, both alienating and profound, weave through these scenes of mysterious lunar ritual”
“The image on the left is an overhead projection of a night-time Arctic scene, with paper cut-outs of British soldiers and Inuit men. I saw the original sketch (on the right) by 16th century artist John White in the British Museum in 2007, recording England’s first contact with Inuit people off the north eastern coast of what’s now Canada. Historically referred to as ‘The Skirmish at Bloody Point”, Queen Elizabeth I’s soldiers attacked a small group of terrified hunters on a glacial cliff, where two jumped to their deaths to avoid capture. A man, woman and infant were stolen and brought back to England: they all died shortly after arrival. The Inuit woman’s sealskin parka is still in the British Museum’s collection, the shape of her body visible inside it. It’s a haunting record of Britain’s colonial violence and Canada’s shameful origins. My projection installation was made in response, while on a 2007 residency in London. The moon in my image signifies the eternal, cyclical nature of oppression. I presented the work at Space Gallery, Hackney.
“It is fundamental that maternal symbols are brought into the world, to change the patriarchal system of power and control that is driving the planet. Unless these changes are made, we are not going to have a life on this planet at all because we are on a completely destructive course. We must turn to maternal values of loving and caring, respect what gives us life, and really look hard for the roots of our humanity. We were all indigenous people who had a relationship to the land at one time in our history. I was brought up thinking in this way by my grandmother who was very connected and also by my mother who was a registered nurse and spent her entire life caring for others. All my life I felt that the world was upside down. It’s an awful illusion to be a man in this crazy world of competition, power and control and I am glad I was brought up in a culture that allowed me to reinforce my real worldview. A lot of education needs to be done to change course and that’s what my architecture aims to do.”
“Nass Shaak Aankáawu (Nobleman at the Head of the Nass River) was hoarding many treasures, including the light. When Yéil (Raven) learned that the man had a daughter who drank from a stream every morning, Yéil turned himself into a hemlock or spruce needle and floated into her cup. She drank him; became pregnant; and Yéil, born in human form, became the love of their lives. Nass Shaak Aankáawu provided every luxury and toy to his precocious grandson. When the child cried for the boxes that held the stars, the moon and the sun, his grandfather could not refuse him. One by one, Yéil T’ukanéiyi (Raven Baby) incessantly cried for and released the stars, the moon and the daylight, much to the dismay of Nass Shaak Aankáawu but much to the benefit of the people and animals of the world. Realizing he was the victim of extreme deceit, Nass Shaak Aankáawu forever marked Yéil by holding him in the smoke of the fireplace, altering his color, turning him from the white spiritual being into the black color he is today.”
Artwork: Orbit by Alison Brenmer
If you are interested in bringing The Box of Delights to children, check out this unbelievable teaching resource on Tlingit culture and the Moon by Dr. Garza.
I have always felt that architecture is a vehicle to change reality. Over the centuries it has been used to reinforce the patriarchal world view with all its temples and tall structures. You can see it in the government’s offices, the buildings of the state, the tall European cathedrals. All these buildings denote dominion over the natural world and over our own nature. When people enter them they sense the power of the form and are so overwhelmed by it that they feel small and somewhat less important. At the beginning of my career I had the opportunity to build a church, a temple if you will, and I wanted it to embody the female form – which was the logical choice considering it was called St. Mary’s Church. I was already very clear about what architecture’s role was by then: not a reinforcement of existing power structures, control and dominion over the world but a tool to engage with loving, caring and maternal symbolism for people to feel nurtured. A lunar, rather than a solar building, if you will. And so, with the help of a priest, I designed the building around a new liturgy, one that would work to get rid of the powerful hierarchy between the ritualist and the people: a church built in a circle around the altar. We need more of that.
I can’t wait to have a client that wants to make a building that is a homage to women and to the moon.