Sasha Huber’s KARAKIA – The Resetting Ceremony (2015) will be screened at Tate St. Ives on Friday, April 26 in a short film screening included in the symposium Global Communities: Curating Modern Art Today. After the screening, Katya García-Antón gives a talk on indigenous art, curation and criticism in relation to curating modernism.

In KARAKIA – The Resetting Ceremony, Huber travels with a greenstone carver Jeff Mahuika (Kati Mahaki, Poutini Kai Tahu) to the site, between Kā Roimata a Hine Hukatere (Franz Josef Glacier) and Te Moeka o Tuawe (Fox Glacier) at Te Waipounamu (South Island) of New Zealand. On location Mr Mahuika offered a karakia blessing to symbolically un-name the glacier of its association with Agassiz and his racism.

Sasha Huber (b. in 1975 in Zurich) is a visual artist who lives and works in Helsinki, Finland. Questioning her roots, her research focuses on the process of building their personal and artistic identity through media such as video, photography, compressed-air stapling, performance-based interventions and book publishing. Committed artist, she works since several years on the project “Demounting Louis Agassiz” which consist in renaming Mount Agassizhorn whose origin comes from Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), Swiss naturalist who developed racist theories, to rename it in Rentyhorn in tribute to the slave, Renty and of those who met similar fates. She participated in numerous international exhibitions, including the 56th La Biennale di Venezia in 2015.

Symposium: Global Communities: Curating Modern Art Today, April 26–27 2019, Tate St. Ives, UK

More information: Tate St. Ives