The Occupation

A full-scale canoe hand-carved from walnut and black cherry, its hull wrapped in Nottingham-style knitted cotton lace. The form is unmistakably indigenous; the surface treatment unmistakably colonial.

The work holds the moment of contact — the canoe, a technology of First Nations territories, claimed and decorated by the culture that would use it to map, traverse, and eventually possess the land. The lace is not ornament. It is occupation.