Greg Staats is Skarù:reˀ (Tuscarora) / Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) b. 1963, Ohsweken, Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. He is a Toronto-based artist whose ongoing Hodinöhsö:ni’ restorative aesthetic accumulates knowledge from the Skarù:reˀ(Tuscarora)/Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) language embodied in wampum, (quahog and whelk shells)— the medium of truth with the intention of recording the heart and good mind of the Hodinöhsö:ni’.
This major solo exhibition is centred on Staats’ new work, Runners Continuum: a series of fourteen successive photographs. In this piece, he explores the identity and role of runners as they run between nations with the wampum string of notification of condolence and other matters. Staats imagines the runners’ footsteps within the language and living metaphors of the good mind. The runner then exists in the context of pre-colonial contact and the post-Great Law of Peace, while carrying a message of reciprocal and worldview when all words were together.
Image credits:
Greg Staats (Mohawk b. 1963), Runners Continuum (3 of 14), 2024, archival digital pigment print. Courtesy of the artist.
