Amelia Winger-Bearskin: SKY/WORLD DEATH/WORLD

Amelia Winger-Bearskin’s SKY/WORLD DEATH/WORLD combines animations and text to connect sunrise and sunset with Indigenous myths. The SKY/WORLD of sunrise references the Haudenosaunee story of Sky Woman, who belonged to the sky people, a tribe rooted in the heavens before the world was created. After falling through a hole made by an uprooted tree, Sky Woman constructed a home on earth from 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?” The DEATH/WORLD of sunset asks “What is made bright by the loss of your light?” and hints at the thin veil between sleep and death. The accompanying animation mixes abstract visuals with a video clip of the artist that had been part of one of her artworks. The work had disappeared but the footage was recovered from the Internet Archive, a testament to both the ephemerality of digital work and the potential of recovery. Winger-Bearskin originally wrote the questions raised in SKY/WORLD DEATH/WORLD for a series of billboards by the artist collective For Freedoms, of which she is a member.