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Stories Held in a Time Traveller's Hogan

 

Stories Held In a Time Traveller’s Hogan

Nicole Neidhardt’s MFA Thesis Exhibition

In the Interdisciplinary Art, Media, and Design Program at OCAD University, Toronto, Ontario.

This virtual space documents my MFA thesis exhibition that was held at Thirding Studio Gallery, in Toronto, Ontario from April 1 - 11, 2021. Feel free to explore the following images, pages, and videos that hold my MFA thesis work. Ahéhee’ for visiting!

 
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Artist Statement

Yá'át'ééh abiní. Nicole Neidhardt yinishyé, Kiyaa'áanii nishłį́, Bilagáana bashishchiin, do Tsinajinii dashicheii, do Bilagáana dashinalí.  Ákót’éego diné asdzáán nishłį́.

Would you like to come into my celestial hogan?

The worlds contained in Nicole Neidhardt’s MFA thesis exhibition, Stories Held in a Time Traveller’s Hogan, offer glimmers into Diné Time, Diné Aesthetics, Indigenous Futurisms, and Sa’ąh Naagháí Bik’eh Hózhǫ́ǫ́n.  The Diné Knowledges held in this exhibition reach across time and space to Diné Ancestors, to Diné Time Travellers, to the Land, and to family.  These connections are held within constellations of temporality and relationality that are created by stories.  Throughout this re-search journey, I began to wonder, how do we activate the Land as Time Machine?  What happens when portals, or spaces of fluid time energy, on the Land start making their own stories?  Diné Time Travellers open up a space for these questions.  They are masterful weavers of time, story, and Diné aesthetics.  Their weavings illuminate pathways for dreaming expansively outside of colonial realities.  For this thesis project, I designed and hand-cut portraits of Diné Time Travellers out of mirror mylar.  These portraits hang from the walls of my celestial hogan.  A hogan is an 8-sided traditional Navajo home.  The portraits are based on two sets of siblings, my mom, Mary and my aunty, Faith and me and my little brother, Hayden. 

For this thesis project, the Diné Time Travellers wanted to visit the four Sacred Mountains to spend time with the stories that reside in the Land there.  My family – my mom, Mary, my dad, Joe, and my brother, Hayden – travelled with me and the Diné Time Travellers to each of the Sacred Mountains in early 2021.  We travelled to:

  Sis Naajiní (Blanca Peak) – Eastern Sacred Mountain - White

  Tsoodził  (Mount Taylor) – Southern Sacred Mountain - Blue

   Dook’o’oosłííd  (San Francisco Peaks) – Western Sacred Mountain - Yellow

   Dibé Ntsaa  (Hesperus Mountain) – Northern Sacred Mountain - Black

White, Blue, Yellow, and Black are the Navajo sacred colours and they are associated with the four Sacred Mountains and the directions East, South, West, and North.  These colours come from Diné Creation Stories, from previous worlds, and from the ways these mountains were adorned when they first came to the Glittering World, the current world we as humans live in now.

My family went above and beyond to help me with my thesis project. They helped me to infuse this exhibition with Diné stories.


 
 

To see more of the exhibition, check out the Exhibition Gallery to see photos and videos. You can also hear me speak more about the work and join me on a tour of the exhibition in my Artist Talk…. Or you can read my thesis document from the OCAD U Repository.

 
 

If you would like to visit/ travel with me and my family and see the portals we opened at each of the 4 Sacred Mountains click on one of the mountains below. You can also dance with us under the full moon at my family home in Santa Fe, NM if you click on the celestial hogan in the center.

These 360 videos are hosted on Youtube and are best viewed with the YouTube app on a mobile device, but they can also be watched in any browser.