Greg Staats: Just Now Or At This Moment, Oh'n-woh

 

Staats has said, "I’m interested in diverse layers of communication; paradoxically, of the wordless as an entity—by which I mean, torn from the Tuscarora or Mohawk languages of my traditional belonging, I am presented with a void in my practice. Yet I carry a reciprocal responsibility to knowledge, so returning to Six Nations as a participant in the land and an observer of its latent meanings, I have acquired a new enthusiasm through a de-essentialized process—of image gathering and being in a state of constant reflexive return. The dissociation brought about by my dilemma becomes a wandering with purpose that allows the gleaning of images and events as evidence stored within the land. Once this evidence is picked up, I then decode and present what a wordless trauma would look like. Dissimilar images can also reveal unexpected affinities, as if they shadowed one another. I exist within the process of transforming belonging by way of selecting more complex images that challenge essential thinking. The images here are of deep personal connections to family, land, and systemic deficits that continue to exist. Working through personal condolence countervails the dragging of an ancestral presence, which casts a traumatic shadow. The idea is to recognize that trauma precipitates a transitional stage of change.”