Momus & Forge: An International Indigenous Art Criticism Residency

Summary of Important Details

· The residency will take place May 15th to May 19th (online) and May 29th to June 4th (in person).
· Participation in the residency is free and travel costs will be covered.
· Applicants must identify as Indigenous.
· Applications are due Sunday March 5th at midnight EST.
· Questions can be directed to programs@momus.ca

Overview

Forge Project and Momus are now accepting applications to Estuaries: An International Indigenous Art Criticism Residency led by Dr. Léuli Eshrāghi (Sāmoa) and Candice Hopkins (Carcross/Tagish).

Seminars, workshops, and other activities will be conducted by leading writers, artists, curators, and scholars belonging to Indigenous communities around the world. Their respective approaches to mentorship will bring together multiple forms of Indigenous writing and voicing, coalescing with complementing one another under Eshrāghi and Hopkins’s leadership.
Participants in this residency will develop texts, share in community-based mentorship, and participate in professional development informed by the breadth of global Indigenous art criticism and cultural protocols.

The residency will take place over two separate weeks: online from Monday May 15th to Friday May 19th, and in-person from Monday May 29th to Sunday June 4th at Forge Project, located on the unceded homelands of the Mu-he-con-ne-ok (People of the Waters that are Never Still) in Upstate New York.

Estuaries will consider how histories can be strengthened in their expansion and transmission between generations and territories through visual, gestural, and verbal languages. This residency focuses on river- and lake-shores, springs and estuaries, as storied places of local Indigenous nations as well as sites of reciprocity and entanglement between many living beings.

Our lines of inquiry include these questions among many:
· Which forms of mark making, writing, and/or critique are most salient to our communities and why?
· In considering Indigenous art criticism as a form of engagement, what do ancestral practices in ceremony, governance, and kinship teach us?
· How do diverse Indigenous aesthetics and knowledges interact between and across Indigenous nations, territories, and art worlds?
· What does water teach us, and how is it different in states of being such as salt, fresh, clean, dirty, mixed?

Requirements

Applicants must identify as Indigenous. Applications will be assessed by Dr. Léuli Eshrāghi, Candice Hopkins, and session leaders belonging to Indigenous communities situated in the Turtle Island, Abya Yala, and the Great Ocean, who recognize that there are multiple forms of community-affirmed indigeneity and of Indigenous governance, as well as significant barriers to deepened cultural connections. The panel will prioritize applicants with lived experiences of their Indigeneity and connections to ancestral land/water territory.

The residency is intended for a cohort of six people from Indigenous communities around the world and representatives from the Mohican and Lenape peoples on whose territory Forge Project is located. Applications are welcome from writers, critics, journalists, teachers, historians, scholars, and those who do not fit neatly within any of these categories, who are both experienced and emerging.

Application Instructions

Your application should be submitted as a single PDF to programs@momus.ca by Sunday March 5th at midnight EST, and include:
· A resume of relevant professional, creative, and/or publishing experience (2 pages maximum).
· A statement of interest detailing why you are applying for this residency and what you hope to gain from the experience (1 page maximum, alternative formats such as video responses will be accepted).
· A writing sample (published or unpublished writing will be accepted).

If you have any questions, feel free to contact programs@momus.ca