Cheryl L’Hirondelle’s êkâya-pâhkaci [ee-guy-uh-puck-a-chee] (don’t freeze up) operates through an intersection of nomadic site-specificity, visual patterning, language, narrative, movement and rhythm. In this work, Cheryl stages a performance presented under an adaptable traveling tent from where she relates and offers information to the audience using her body, voice and graffiti/tagging. The audience, by proximity and in accepting her invitation to witness her activities, “comes in from the cold” and becomes part of her “camp.”
Cheryl L’Hirondelle
êkâya-pâhkaci (don’t freeze up)
Thursday October 16 8 pm
Toronto Free Gallery
Presented by FADO Performance Art Centre as part of the IDea series in conjunction with the 2008 imagineNATIVE Film + New Media Festival
Sponsored by the 7th 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art
Cheryl L’Hirondelle (aka Waynohtêw, Cheryl Koprek) is an Alberta-born half-breed (Métis/Cree-non status/treaty, French, German, Polish) artist and musician. Her creative practice is an investigation of the junction of a Cree worldview (nêhiyawin) in contemporary time and space. Since the early ’80s, L’Hirondelle has created, performed and presented work in a variety of artistic disciplines, including: music, performance art, theatre, performance poetry, storytelling, installation and new media. In the early ’90s, she began a parallel career as an arts consultant and programmer, cultural strategist/activist, and director/producer of both independent works and projects within national artist-run networks.
FADO artist page for Cheryl L’Hirondelle
Critical essay by Warren Arcand
Eyewitness account by Andrew James Paterson
