Projects / Shows

Installation, Kúme

Work from TOA's ongoing textile installation at Kúme, June 7 – August 23, 2025, at Salmon Arm Arts Centre.

Secwepemtsin for “going to the forest to find food,” Kúme is the second in a series of three exhibitions focussed on displacement of Indigenous plants, animals and people. Featuring ten BC artists using a variety of mediums, topics include the salmon collapse, highway and railway impact on water-reliant food plants and animals, and berries disappearing due to climate change.

The Only Animal will share objects from our textile installation (“worlding”), which features patchworked, botanically printed “hyperbolic” duvets and cordage, both in ongoing creation alongside our community engaged performances. These pieces will be shared with field sounds collected from Clack Creek in winter/spring 2025, and recorded texts by Barbara Adler.

The front side of the largest duvet is eco-printed and natural-dyed to match the colours of water, rocks and vegetation at Roberts and Clack Creeks, where the salmon runs are impacted by clearcutting in the watershed. In 2026, we’ll be continuing to dye and sew other parts of the duvet alongside ‘dye-pot’ conversations with collaborators and community. Work we do in Salmon Arm will become part of this piece, going forward.

Events

On June 14, we’ll host a public botanical printing workshop to complete one component of the work; other pieces will grow throughout the summer with contributions from the public.

On June 15, our installation will help set the stage for an afternoon of live performance at Theatre on the Edge Festival, featuring local creators who draw from practices of gathering, foraging and “patchwork”.