Author of the exhibition A Pledge. The First Part of a Trick – 04 – Kiva is a French artist Aymeric Ebrard (born 1977), who is based in Paris, but has lately spent some time traveling in Arizona (USA) and Lithuania. He looks at foreign lands trying to hear a resonance of stories, fables and myths from different layers of time. Collecting things as signs of communities as well as landmarks, the artist tries to grope a starting point, a point of origin, which lastly appears being inevitably dynamic and can only generate new though never ending systems of coordinates.
A kiva commonly is a room used by modern Puebloans (Native American people in the Southwestern United States) for religious rituals, as well for other social secular activities. They are specific to each clans and community, and each of them represent the world itself and show the point of emergence.
Tovar [the leader of the Spanish] and his men were conducted to Oraibi. They were met by all the clan chiefs at Tawtoma, as prescribed by prophecy, where four lines of sacred meal were drawn. The Bear Clan leader stepped up to the barrier and extended his hand, palm up, to the leader of the white men. If he was indeed the true Pahana, the Hopis knew he would extend his own hand, palm down, and clasp the Bear Clan leader’s hand to form the nakwach, the ancient symbol of brotherhood. Tovar instead curtly commanded one of his men to drop a gift into the Bear chief’s hand, believing that the Indian wanted a present of some kind. Instantly all the Hopi chiefs knew that Pahana had forgotten the ancient agreement made between their peoples at the time of their separation. Nevertheless, the Spaniards were escorted up to Oraibi, fed and quartered, and the agreement explained to them. It was understood that when the two were finally reconciled, each would correct the other’s laws and faults; they would live side by side and share in common all the riches of the land and join their faiths in one religion that would establish the truth of life in a spirit of universal brotherhood.
The Spaniards did not understand, and having found no gold, they soon departed.
Frank Waters((Frank Waters, “Book of The Hopi”, 1963, p. 252.))
The exhibition is the fourth episode in the series A Pledge. The First Part of a Trick, curated by Neringa Bumbliene. It will be on view until 20th October in Klaipeda Art Centre (KCCC), Lithuania.
Curator: Neringa Bumbliene
Organizers: The Purple Swamphen, KCCC
Pictures by Nerijus Jankauskas, Neringa Bumblienė
