Everything I Say is True, 2017

Written By Kite .

Description: 

Everything I Say is True, performance, Kite, 2017, 30 minutes. Carbon fiber, dress, video, sound, commissioned by Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre.

Everything I Say is True is a site-specific performance and installation project commissioned by the Walter Phillips Gallery. In performance Kite constructs a complex conspiratorial narrative composed with the structure of her grandfather's teachings. Through the use of family and historical documents as well as through a body of work in various mediums, using tactics of manipulation structured upon her grandfather's sweat lodge ceremony as a powerful form, but instead populated with outright lies about time, relationships between Uranium mining and Standing Rock protests, US government conspiracies, claims about Lakota linguistics, and the audience’s vigorous belief in Western physics. This piece attempts to force belief upon an audience by conflating Indigenous magic with coin tricks, tricking people into believing things they don’t believe. Everything I Say is True interrogates the tension between ‘belief’ and ‘truth’ while making a case for the concept of a ‘responsible truth.’

This piece was commissioned by the Walter Phillips Gallery at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and was curated by Jacqueline Bell.

Previews Showings: 

Walter Phillips Gallery, BANFF Center, March 29 – May 10, 2017. Banff Performance Video; 29:39min

PŌULIULI (FĀ‘ALIGA): Suzanne Kite - Indigenous Listening, West Space Melbourne, Part of Yirramboi Festival x Liquid Architecture x Midsumma Festival x West Space,  May 6, 2017.

OBX Labs: Indigenous Futures Cluster Presents Suzanne Kite, 26 October 2017. Concordia University, Montreal. OBX Labs Video; 31:44min

Philbrook Museum of Art, 2018.

Vancouver New Music Festival, Annex Theatre, October 17-19, 2019. VNM Performance (2019); 30:48min

Squeaky Wheel Film & Media Center, November 22- December 21, 2019

Dress presented at Broadway Gallery, presented by the Soft Network, December 1, 2021. New York, NY. 


Reviews and Press:

Erin Sutherland. “10 Indigenous Artists Forging Community Ties.” Canadian Art, Summer 2017: Kinship Issue. 19 June 2017. https://canadianart.ca/features/spotlight-constellations-of-kin/ 

Canadian Art

Natasha Chaykowski. “In Focus: “Everything I Say Is True.” ” BlackFlash, 34.3. 2017.

2017 Interview. 


Kite .

Kite (Dr. Suzanne Kite) is an Oglála Lakȟóta performance artist, visual artist, and composer raised in Southern California, with a BFA from CalArts in music composition,and an MFA from Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School, and a Ph.D. in Fine Arts from Concordia University, Montreal. Kite’s scholarship and practice investigate contemporary Lakȟóta ontologies through research-creation, computational media, and performance, often working in collaboration with family and community members. Recently, Kite has been developing body interfaces for machine learning driven performance and sculptures generated by dreams, and experimental sound and video work. Kite has published in The Journal of Design and Science (MIT Press), with the award winning article, “Making Kin with Machines,” co-authored with Jason Lewis, Noelani Arista, and Archer Pechawis. Kite is currently a 2023 Creative Capital Award Winner, 2023 USA Fellow, and a 2022-2023 Creative Time Open Call artist with Alisha B. Wormsley. Kite is currently Distinguished Artist in Residence and Assistant Professor of American and Indigenous Studies, Bard College and a Research Associate and Residency Coordinator for the Abundant Intelligences (Indigenous AI) project.

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