Growing up outside the indigenous community, a lot of my Indigenous identity was projected onto me through old images like Curtis Edward photos and things like that, and there is this myth that native people are no longer there. I want to show that we are here, and so these drawings are all of my currently living relatives.

Except for my grandparents - they are here (in the last drawing) through a spiritual connection, between with me and my grandmother. When I went to make my piece, and I had everything ready and set up to make it, I couldn’t -- there was this block there. So I stopped. I drew my kids, instead (the one by last drawing). And the next morning, I could hear my grandma say, it’s ok to draw me, just hang me next to your son – because she and my son were very close. I felt I had this permission to go ahead and draw them.

I drew my grandparents separate from the residential school, because I really wanted to free them from the residential school. My grandmother would have definitely not wanted me to put her image alongside the residential school, because she did as much as she could to separate herself from that.

Strawberries have a very spiritual connection with indigenous people, they are the first berries of the season, they represent birth and renewal and the new year, the first celebration. They represent health and life. I think of this whole body of work as a healing process for indigenous people. Residential schools are a very small portion of our history, and there is so much more that defines us. I think of the strawberry as this healing, rebirth, and renewal, because I really do believe that Indigenous people are in a renaissance right now. The culture, the language, is alive and is coming back.

I took an anthropology course, and there were circles and squares and diamonds to represent family trees. There was something very beautiful about that visual imagery. With the strawberries and their root systems, I was thinking about that kind of code, symbolizing family trees and rebirth and history. I saw the botanical drawings, and that’s what drew me in – oh, I need the plant with the roots, for when you think about history from generation to generation, it all affects everything. The residential school affected how my grandmother parented, how my father parented, it affected how I parented, and that is what I was thinking about with the botanical drawings.

Interview with Jennifer Lickers

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My work is grounded in my lived experience as a Thai American woman with a mental health difference. Although my diagnosis of bipolar does not define me, the spectrum from depression to mania and the blips in between has impacted my perspective and sensibility gained with mad pride. As someone who self-identifies with disability and as a disability justice advocate, I incorporate criptime into my practice. This means rest and recovery are just as important if not more than productivity. I adjust as needed and allow flexibility to others’ timelines as well. Spoon theory, symbolized in my sculpture with actual spoons, recognizes and acknowledges the fluctuating level of energy for tasks by the amount of nourishing spoons left.

The video, Mom’s Story, was filmed during the last year of her life during which time she had dementia. Despite her condition, she recognized me and always found a way to express her love. I wanted to center her story and aspirations captured in an audio recording from a prior decade and link it to mine, the next generation.

The sculpture in the corner, Contained (66” x 12” x 6”), continues the relationship between my mom and me, both with mental health experiences of depression. Our photo together, me as a child, is contained in a mounted prescription bottle inside the cage. The ribbon that wraps around and extends below in strips states, “On a 1-10 rating scale, 1 meaning nowhere near their usual level of self and 10 meaning at their usual level of functioning or better, my family member is…” Below the cage a thick black hair braid extends with a Thai marigold garland and ends with a large tassel of a torn American flag integrated with a torn Thai textile with bells including a temple bell looped onto it.

The series of large charcoal drawings (5 ft x 7.5 ft) on illustration board feature a bipolar sensory neuron anthropomorphized - human-like with my mouth taking place of the soma or cell body. The dendrites extend above and the axons are feet-like extend below. I wanted to create monstrous vulnerability that I self-identify with. The scream is for agency. I use charcoal as a transformative material. Charcoal is symbolic of my experience with it’s use to absorb chemicals in the body after the stomach is pumped. The messiness reveals the process with the fingerprints emphasizing the human mark. I also reveal my relationship to the work through my handwritten notes.

The last collaged charcoal drawings on lined paper (36” x 24”) is part of an ongoing series of over 80 drawings, What I have learned (Fill in the Blank). These four were created in response to the ongoing conflict in Gaza and feature my bipolar sensory neuron. I wanted to acknowledge that war has disabled Palestine as noted by the writer, Leah Piepzna-Samarasinha. The collage of the first three drawings are downloaded images from the internet of bombed hospitals in Gaza. The last drawing uses collage from the bombed vehicles of Central World Kitchen, ambulances and spoiled watermelon and other fruit.

chanikasvetvilas.com					
Instagram: @chanikasvetvilas

Multiverse Statement by Chanika Svetvilas

Interview with Jennifer Lickers

Chanika Svetvilas

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