GABRIELLE L’HIRONDELLE HILL, JENEEN FREI NJOOTLI, CHANDRA MELTING TALLOW AND TANIA WILLARD

2018

Oct 8

RIVERSIDE PARK

For this collaborative project, cinematographers Amy Kazymerchyk and Aaron Leon traveled to artist and curator Tania Willard’s BUSH Gallery in Secwépemculecw, the territory of the Secwépemc Nation, to trap rabbits in the winter of 2016. Traditionally, rabbits were an everyday staple of Indigenous communities and the animals were typically trapped and processed by women. Relatively uneventful as the women learn these traditions through the process of this project, the video captures the complexities of invisible labour and the strong bonds between this group of women. Playfully referring to popular culture by way of Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny cartoons and subverting the notion of “bunnies” as a feminized diminutive name, Coney Island Baby engages with mythologies and stereotypes around women and rabbits.

https://front.bc.ca/events/these-hands/