Holding Space: National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

Date: Museum Collection Gallery, 11 am to 1 pm, 2 pm to 4 pm
Remembrance ceremony at 5 pm
Price: Museum admission is free on September 30

The Museum’s Collection Gallery will be a space for reflection, conversation, and artistic expression on September 30, the inaugural National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

As part of the Museum’s observances, Mi'gmaq singer-songwriter and percussionist Darlene Gijuminag will perform and engage visitors from 11 am to 1 pm and again between 2 pm and 4 pm. The afternoon will conclude with a short ceremonial performance at 5 pm featuring Gijuminag and Anishinaabe-Irish dancer and multidisciplinary artist Brian Solomon.

Pakistani filmmaker Imran Babur will document the performances and engage the artists and participants on the question, “What does Truth and Reconciliation mean to you?”

Dialogue between art, music, dance, literature, film

The backdrop for Holding Space will be Rust Garden, an interactive art installation currently on display in the Museum’s Collection Gallery. Created by Toronto artists Matt Donovan and Hallie Siegel, the exhibition consists of every single letter and punctuation mark — all 700,000 of them — that appears in novelist Hugh Maclennan’s 1945 Can-lit classic Two Solitudes.

Rust Garden encourages audience members to pick up the pieces and use them to craft new, more representative stories about Canadian identity. And on September 30, it will serve a special role: as a canvas for artists and visitors alike to reflect on the difficult legacies of Canada’s relationship with Indigenous people, to draw attention to often-neglected chapters in our shared history, and to spell out our hopes for a better future. 

The following quote, from Margaret Atwood’s 2013 novel MaddAddam, will frame the conversation: "There’s the story, then there’s the real story, then there’s the story of how the story came to be told. Then there’s what you leave out of the story. Which is part of the story too."

Please note: Filming will take place in the Collection Gallery during this event. 

BIOs

Darlene Gijuminag, of the Mi'gmag First Nation, is a singer and songwriter from Gesgapegiag, Quebec. She is a mother of four beautiful children and four beautiful grandchildren.

Brian Solomon is of Anishinaabe and Irish heritage, born in the remote community of Shebahonaning, located in the Manitoulin district of northern Ontario. He has created a community work with over 40 interpreters, solos in trees, and animated installations of landfill. Solomon’s work has toured nationally and internationally and has been presented at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre, and the Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst Berlin.

Imran Babur is a successful and celebrated documentary filmmaker, photographer, and teacher in Pakistan, and an emerging multidisciplinary artist in Canada.

Land acknowledgement

The Aga Khan Museum is built on land that is and has been under the stewardship of many Indigenous peoples over millennia, including the Anishinaabe, the Haudenosaunee, the Wendat and, most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River. We are grateful for the opportunity to work and live on this land and be in this territory.