Aux confluents de l’Akiawenhrahk
Angela Marsh
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Andrée Levesque Sioui
In 2021, Angela Marsh initiates It’s really just a love story - C’est vraiment juste une histoire d’amour, a human/nature co-creation project made on the Plains of Abraham, in Québec city, through the deliberate non-act of allowing the grass to grow, so that wild plants and the various species they nourish could re-inhabit this meadow space. In the second year of her project, Angela Marsh has invited Andrée Levesque Sioui to join her as a poet.
“My collaboration with Andrée on the Plains of Abraham in 2022 profoundly changed my way of understanding the role of art and collaboration in weaving relation. Andrée shared her profound attention with all living beings, from the wild plants surfacing in the field and the insects and birds who joyfully accompanied them, to the random passers-by, semi-drunk picnickers and troubled souls seeking peace. Andrée took the time to connect with each one. While I tended to be more focussed on the non-human worlds that I was hoping to nourish, Andrée saw it much larger, really understanding the importance of forming relations with all forms of life, human and beyond, and fostering connections between imposed categories. She helped me find a way back into integrating the human in my vision of nature. From Andrée I learned the importance of honouring longer temporalities and trying to imagine projects where we might share knowledge and experience across differences, passing the stick from one to another. Our collaboration fruited an important friendship in my life, for not only do I consider Andrée a dear sister, but also a trusted, critical voice who patiently checks and reframes (gently when required) my intentions as non-indigenous ally in this collective work of reconciliation and repair.
The image I am submitting is of a « tapestry » project that I created in Toronto in 2022. I was able to revisit my hometown to create a new work from the wild plants found close to A Space Gallery in the 401 Richmond St. Building. While I found little to nothing in the over-developed downtown core, a richness opened up to me in my favorite old haunts in the allies and backstreets of Chinatown and Kensington Market, where pluralisms and diversity, plant and human, thrive in the margins. The threads, hand-spun and botanically dyed, were purchased from a small artist run company in Toronto, and I worked with Mary Taylor of the Curve Lake nation to integrate some Anishinaabe uses of the plants I was working with and their Anishnaabemowin names in the plant lexicon publication.
The threads of the tapestry, careful human-plant creations, naturally tangle and intertwine, reminding us of our relations between individuals, species and cultures.”
– Angela Marsh, June 2026
“I have immense respect for Angela, for her activism and her art, which are seamlessly intertwined. Who she is is reflected in her art. Her art is an expression of who she is at her core. It is art committed to life itself, so I was deeply moved to be invited by her and immediately wanted to say yes. What I said yes to was the friendship between us, as evidenced by the meadow site project. Throughout the project, Angela was respectful, a good listener, attentive, curious, and considerate of my well-being, the time I needed, and my way of seeing and approaching creativity. I learnt so much from her simply by spending time with her, listening to her, and watching her interact with children, older people and other artists during cultural outreach activities. I saw a person of great humility who prioritises the goal of building relationships; what she sows always seems far more important to her than gaining recognition. She opened my mind on many levels regarding ecology, and her reflections now shape my daily life.
Whilst it is true that I am curious about people, whoever they may be, and that I find it easy to connect with them, I, in turn, have learnt from Angela, from her knowledge and from the depth of her relationship with plants.
As with Yahndawa’, which for me was an opportunity for dialogue and genuine connection – where not everything is easy, but everything has meaning – insofar as my aim is to build bridges between our artistic and human communities. It allowed me to work with Jeffrey, Erika and Phile, and this first collaborative creation led me to work subsequently with Jeffrey as a duo on a commissioned piece for the Musée ambulant, entitled Échos / de awehskwahk. We deepened our relationship. Just as there is tension in the threads of the fléché, we too experienced tensions in our relationship.
And just as in a piece of weaving, we didn’t let go; we held fast to the threads of our relationship, which strengthened our bonds and gave this work much greater meaning. We talked, we cried, we hugged each other, and we learnt a great deal from it all. The fruit of our labour—the artwork—is also our relationship.
From this work, I kept the scraps of the fléché, and this is what can be seen in my piece of the skirt of the world. These scraps are fragments of relationships, reminders of what we have set aside, yet which we honour because they bear witness to what demanded labour and attention. Is it not the very nature of the human artist to see what falls by the wayside, what is hidden, the unspoken, the invisible world, and to transform it so that we pay attention to it, for everything has value?
I reflected on my project within the exhibition L’équilibre des vrilles through the lens of our Wendat mythology: the roots of the sky world, the geese that caught the sky woman, the red cord spiralling like the path of our origins from the sky to the earth, and the skirt embodying Yäa’tayenhtsihk, the primordial woman who fell from the sky, beneath which I felt it was fitting for us to take refuge.”
– Andrée Levesque Sioui, transcript of a telephone interview conducted in June 2026