Decolonizing Street Art

This summer I had the opportunity to participate in the Decolonizing Street Artconvergence in Tio:tiake (occupied Montreal) and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to visit Mohawk Territory. The model for this piece and I talked about yearning for the languages of our indigenous abuelas and what it means to define who we are today. This piece also celebrates the knowledge that is so common that we forget it is rooted in indigenous wisdom. The maguey plant (agave) is well known for giving us tequila and mescal bit did you know it can also be used as fiber for hammocks, carpets, fishnets, and rope as well as clothing, food and a healing agent that kills e coli and staph? It was mashed into paper to make codices! The books that the Spaniards burned when they invaded these lands. This knowledge is so close and common yet we some times can’t account for it. We are so close we look past it. Like trying to chase a rainbow which is the reflection of light in droplet of water we just have to stop, pay attention and look at things with the right angle to see them. Aiako’nikonhraién:ta’ne’. This is a Mohawk word that translates to- to come to understand and that is what man of us Xicanxs are working so diligently to do against the violence of forgetting that colonialism pushes us toward. To understand who we are and where we come from. I was interviewed by Maxime Faureduring my time there. Watch this video to learn about the mural I painted while I was there.