Lara Kramer is a performer, choreographer and multidisciplinary artist of mixed Oji-cree and settler heritage, raised in London, Ontario. She lives and works in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal. Her choreographic work, research and field work over the last twelve years has been grounded in intergenerational relations, intergenerational knowledge and the impacts of the Indian Residential Schools of Canada. Her creations in the form of dance, performance and installation have been presented across Canada and Australia, New Zealand, Martinique, the US and the UK.
Lara Kramer was appointed a Human Rights Advocate through the Holocaust Memorial Centre of Montreal (2012) following the national tour of her work Fragments, a performance piece inspired by her mother’s stories and lived experience as a survivor of the Indian Residential Schools of Canada. She has received multiple awards, acknowledgements and prizes for her work both as an emerging and established artist. Lara Kramer has participated in several residencies including the Indian Residential School Museum of Canada in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, and is Dancemakers Resident Artist from 2018-2021.
Artwork description
The present edition of Dazibao satellite is the result of a special partnership between Dazibao and the MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels). In Blankets, Herds and Ghosts is a new work by multidisciplinary artist and choreographer Lara Kramer.
Two public billboards, located at Café Cherrier and Marché Bonsecours, feature images of Kramer cloaked in a Trade Blanket designed and fabricated collaboratively with her mother and artist, Ida Baptiste. The images were created in collaboration with photographer Stefan Petersen and are accompanied by a podcast including conversations between Lara Kramer, Ida Baptiste, as well as Anishinaabe Elder Emerson Nanigishki’ing. The project also comprises a selection of texts, including a prayer and a historical text contextualizing the Trade Blanket and Jingle Dress.
“This is a practice of labour, of love, and mobility. A practice that works with our soft hands, hard hands, our ancestor hands. A practice for sharing, in the way that kinship positions us in relation to past, present and future voices, territories, one another and other, memories, traditions, stories, materials, sound and spirit. The practice is durational but offers an experience of non-time. It proposes a pacing and invitation for embodiment, a connection to prayer, healing, creation, memory and reflection on past, present and future. A practice of deepening the intergenerational knowledge that comes from my mother, my children, family and kin, all in dialogue with one another. (…)” — Lara Kramer