Hoówen – curated by Living Land Collective

e8-9 Dover Street London W1S 4LF
PV: Thursday, 10th October 2024

Open: 11th October – 1st November 2024
Tuesday to Friday  10-6
Saturday 10-5 pm
Sunday (13th October only)  10-5 pm

Please join us for our Dover Street debut of “Hoówen”. Living Land Collective and Hypha Studios present an exhibition of 7 international Indigenous and Diasporic artists who are fighting to restore an Indigenous worldview. Living Land Collective provides insight into the realities of post-colonial identities that have been harmed by genocide, occupation, language and culture loss, child theft, environmental destruction, displacement and assimilation.

Living Land Collective is currently comprised of artists; Claudia Ramirez Julio, Hayett Belarbi McCarthy, Henri Affandi, Laura Ní Fhlaibhín, MARIA, Michael James Fox & Tyler Eash.

The London based artist group was formed to foster discourse between occupied and displaced peoples of the world. The artists use their respective practices to reclaim buried discourses pertaining to post-colonial identities that have been forcefully displaced or assimilated by an occupation of “nations” that sought their erasure. Whilst the members all engage in art as a liberatory action to reclaim and embolden their ancestral identities, the artists represent Land from different corners of the world. Their practices speak to their respective causes and struggles for visibility, and make reference to both ancestral wisdom and a longing for what was taken.

“Hoówen”, a word surviving the Selk’nam Genocide of “Tierra del Fuego”, is the name for the natural forces and spirits that undergo metamorphosis to become humans and nature to restore harmony. As the 7 artists bring forward powerful acts of colonial defiance and liberatory visions of Indigenous Futurity in response to loss, confusion, and grief, “Hoówen”, was the word gifted to define the intentionality of Living Land Collective’s first project.

Comprising of painting, sculpture, film, photography and installation, “Hoówen” is a collective act of world rebuilding that claims a sovereign territory in West London’s Dover Street. The artists, who bridge opposing worldviews within their lives and bodies, seek to initiate healing between these states of being. Through a collective sharing of global Diasporic and Indigenous strife and a meshing of our surviving ancestral wisdom, “Hoówen” proclaims Indigenous and Diasporic Peoples of the world as united and aligned for the protection of the Earth and all her children.