How we came to be

We, as Indigenous People, know that we are never the first to do things. 

The portal of generative exchange that is now held open by Knowledge of Wounds is one iteration of many generations of collaboration and kinship between Native artists of Australia, the Pacific, Turtle Island, and Abiayala. We honour and speak aloud what we know of our recent lineage, as a counter-gesture to culture of colonial amnesia, which seeks always to divest us of our origins. We narrate this recent history as an offering of respect to the labour of others who have preceded us, and to the matrix of relationships that have made K.o.W possible.

In January 2018, a delegation of Aboriginal Australian artists and arts leaders travelled to Lenapehoking as invited guests to convene the inaugural First Nations Dialogues, with the goal of growing the Global First Nations Performing Arts Network. This event was initiated via the coalition of two Indigenous women, artist Emily Johnson (Yupik) and Merindah Donnelly (Wiradjuri), the director of Blakdance (Australia’s peak body for Indigenous performing arts). The presence of the Indigenous Australian cohort was supported by Performance Space New York, Blakdance and the Australia Council for the Arts. This group included Merindah Donnelly, Angela Flynn, Leanne Buckskin, Paola Balla, and SJ Norman. During this meeting, the group gathered in discussion, ceremony, and consultation with Turtle Island artists and Native community leaders, Aunty Muriel Miguel (Kuna, Rappahannock) and Hadrian Coumans (Lenape) among them. That series of meetings laid the foundation for future collaborations across Australia and Turtle Island, including the development of Knowledge of Wounds. 

After connecting in January 2018, Johnson, Norman and Donnelly continued a collaborative dialogue which subsequently led to Johnson inviting Norman to return to Lenapehoking as a commissioned artist for KIN, the artistic program which accompanied the second First Nations Dialogues gathering in January 2019. On this occasion, Norman and his ensemble presented the work Cicatrix 1 (that which is taken/that which remains). This work was a long-durational ritual, referencing the ceremonial scarification rites practiced throughout the Australian continent, during which Norman received 147 surgical incisions on the skin of his back, each one representing an Indigenous Australian person who had died in prison or police custody over the past decade. The blade was wielded by Norman’s collaborator, Carly Sheppard (Murri). Audiences similarly made offerings of blood: a single drop from their dominant hand (extracted by Mykaela Saunders, Koori/Lebanese). They additionally made offerings of skin, receiving a permanent mark to the top knuckle of their non-dominant index finger, made by Inuit tattooist, Holly Nordlum. The space was officiated by another presenting artist in the KIN program, Joshua Pether (Kalkadoon), with a live sonic accompaniment by Wiradjuri composer, Naretha Williams. The blood was washed from Norman’s back by Muriel Miguel, who also offered song. The ritual opened with the lighting of a medicinal fire, and concluded with a nighttime procession to the East River, where an offering of blood and smoke and saltwater from Gadigal Country was made to the East River, our relative. 45 people participated in this work, among them devynn emory (Lenape, Blackfoot), María Regina Firmino-Castillo, Javier Stell Frésquez (Piru, Tigua) and Tohil Fidel Brito Bernal (Ixil), all of whom would become crucial participants in what would become the first K.o.W. 

Shortly after that ritual, SJ and Joseph met at the apartment of a mutual friend, Tavia Nyong’o, while the scars on SJ’s back were still healing. That initial conversation revolved around our shared sense of relating across and through colonial wounds; despite and in refusal of the normativities that restrict our movement and our emergent becomings as Indigenous people. 

In the months following Cicatrix, Performance Space NY invited SJ to curate a new series of readings, meetings, discussions, and performances as part of an overall focus on queerness, diaspora, displacement, and Indigeneity. The initial idea for Knowledge of Wounds thus emerged out of SJ’s performance practice and original curatorial design. In June 2019, SJ invited Joseph to develop Knowledge of Wounds as a co-curator. Their collaboration has grown exponentially from that point.

Three other gatherings of First Nations artists contributed significantly to building the weave that would support the emergence of K.o.W: firstly, the Indigenous Choreographers Gathering at UC Riverside, organised by María Regina Firmino-Castillo. Norman was invited to attend this gathering as a delegate, and in doing so was connected, among many others, with Lukás Avendaño (Zapotec) and Jack Grey (Māori), who would later become part of the first K.o.W. Secondly, the CXL Artists exchange, hosted by K.o.W partner organisation PICA, which connected Norman to K.o.W artists Kevin Holden (Diné) and Demian DinéYazhi’ (Diné), as well as to our K.o.W producer, Carlee Smith. Finally, NIRIN, the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, curated by Brook Andrew (Wiradjuri), which connected Norman to K.o.W artist Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit) among others. 

We acknowledge all those—named and unnamed, known and unknown—whose knowledge, labour, and kinship has supported our work.