Amelia Winger-Bearskin: Sky/World Death/World

Amelia Winger-Bearskin’s Sky/World Death/World combines animations and poetic text connecting sunrise and sunset to Indigenous creation myths. The Sky/World of sunrise references the Haudenosaunee origin story of Sky Woman who belonged to the sky people, a tribe rooted in the celestial heavens before the world was created. After falling through a hole created by an uprooted tree, Sky Woman creates a home on earth out of the oceans and mud with the help of animals. Winger-Bearskin pairs abstract animations of dawn created in a game engine with the question “Who benefits from your burnout?,” using it as a prompt for reflecting on the sharing of life. The Death/World of sunset asks the question “What is made bright by the loss of your light?” and hints at the thin veil between sleep and death while evoking renewal. The accompanying animation mixes abstract visuals with a video clip of the artist herself that once was part of one of her artworks. The work had disappeared, and the footage was recovered from the Internet archive, a testament to both the ephemerality of digital work and the potential of recovery. The questions raised in Sky/World Death/World were originally written by Winger-Bearskin for a series of billboards by the artist collective For Freedoms of which she is a member.