Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts, installation view, Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, 2021. Courtesy of Walter Phillips Gallery and ICI. Photo: Rita Taylor. Soundings is curated by Candice Hopkins and Dylan Robinson and the tour is organized by Independent Curators International (ICI). Learn more @curatorsintl
Candice Hopkins and Dylan Robinson, Land Poem (after Soundings)
Text, 2021, with audio version read by Cheryl L’Hirondelle, 2025
1:45 minutes, looped
Courtesy of Candice Hopkins and Dylan Robinson
Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts is the origin of the work, Land Poem (after Soundings) that was co-written by the exhibition’s curators, Candice Hopkins and Dylan Robinson for the iteration of the touring exhibition in its presentation at Walter Phillips Gallery in 2021.
At the core of the exhibition was the question, How can a score be a call and tool for decolonization? At Walter Phillips Gallery, the poem was displayed on an outdoor banner that was installed in the archway outside the building in which it is located. In this audio form, recorded in 2025 with celebrated multidisciplinary artist and singer/songwriter Cheryl L’Hirondelle, the poem has a new relationship to the building it references as audible within its entrance.
The travelling exhibition, Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts was organized by Independent Curators International (ICI). Land Poem (after Soundings) is presented as a part of the long-term exhibition, Listening Devices taking place outside of Walter Phillips Gallery.
Biographies
Candice Hopkins
Candice Hopkins is a citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation and lives in Red Hook, New York. Her writing and curatorial practice explore the intersections of history, contemporary art, and Indigeneity. She is executive director and chief curator of Forge Project, Taghkanic, New York, and fellow in Indigenous Art History and Curatorial Studies, Bard College. She is curator of the exhibitions Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self-Determination Since 1969, at the Hessel Museum of Art, and the touring exhibitions Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts, co-curated with Dylan Robinson, and ᑕᑯᒃᓴᐅᔪᒻᒪᕆᒃ Double Vision, featuring textiles, prints and drawings by Jessie Oonark, Janet Kigusiuq, and Victoria Mamnguqsualuk. She was the senior curator for the inaugural 2019 and 2022 editions of the Toronto Biennial of Art and part of the curatorial team for the Canadian Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale, featuring the work of the media collective Isuma; as well as documenta 14, Athens and Kassel; and Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Her notable essays include “The Gilded Gaze: Wealth and Economies on the Colonial Frontier,” in the documenta 14 Reader; “Outlawed Social Life,” in South as a State of Mind; and “The Appropriation Debates (or The Gallows of History),” in Saturation: Race, Art, and the Circulation of Value.
Dylan Robinson
Dylan Robinson is a xwélmexw (Stó:lō/Skwá First Nation) scholar and artist who seeks to prioritize Indigenous resurgence through writing, curation and inter-arts practice. He is the author of Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies, which received several national and international awards including the best book for the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association and the Wallace Berry award for Music Theory for the Society of Music Theory. Across his writing, he works with the sound of Halq’emeylem language to make space for the resonance and vibrancy of shxwelméxwelh concepts. His curatorial practice includes the Soundings exhibition which toured internationally from 2019—2025, and sxelxéles te tl'etl'áxel / designs for inviting, commissioned by Le Vivier for their new music festival La Semaine du Neuf. Robinson is a Professor in the Faculty of Arts at the University of British Columbia.