Is justice a process or an outcome?
Bambitchell is the artistic collaboration between Sharlene Bamboat and Alexis Kyle Mitchell. Since 2009, their research-based practice has taken form through moving image, installation, and performance to reimagine nationalist histories—playfully recycling official state documents and institutional archives. Their works have been exhibited at festivals and galleries such as Mercer Union (Toronto), International Film Festival Rotterdam, Berlin International Film Festival, Dazibao (Montreal), and the BFI London Film Festival (UK). Their practice has been the subject of writing in Artforum, the Brooklyn Rail, Canadian Art, and the book Contemporary Citizenship, Art, and Visual Culture: Making and Being Made (Routledge, 2017). The duo held fellowships at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany (2016–17), the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire (2018), and the Darling Foundry in Montreal (2019). Bambitchell were long-listed for the 2020 Sobey Art Award through the National Gallery of Canada.
DOLPHINS, SHIPS AND OTHER VESSELS
Dolphins, ships and other vessels is a performance reading created by artist duo Bambitchell to continue their exploration of the legal frameworks that govern non-human animals and objects, moving from the territorial jurisdictions explored in their film Bugs & Beasts Before the Law (2019), to the legal realm of the sea. The piece is a polyvocal narrative that spans bodies of water. Stretching from Te Moana-o-Raukawa, to the South China Sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and the Clyde and Kaniatarowanenneh Rivers, the narrative traces the disappearance and reappearance of a dolphin, the reincarnations of ships, and the embodiments of Jinn—as vessels, mammals, water, myth, and law.
Dolphins, ships and other vessels features performances by Sukaina Kubba & Faraz Anoushahpour, with sound design by Richy Carey.