Winter Count: We Are In Crisis

Hironaka & Suib are pleased to present We Are in Crisis, a single-channel video installation by the artist union Winter Count. The exhibition follows on the heels of the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord on June 1st, which was the same day that oil began flowing through the $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline.

We Are in Crisis consists of sound and image collected in North and South Dakota at the time of the Standing Rock protests. In a recent statement, the members of Winter Count write:

‘Today we see natural cycles of life disrupted by the extraction and transportation of what we have come to call resources from the land. The Nations of all living things are being destroyed in this pursuit. We acknowledge that the need to protect water and land is increasing in every part of the world. As human beings we are responsible to the ancestors and descendants of all living things for how we live. So we bring together our minds as artists to cultivate gratitude and respect for water, land, and the interdependence of all things living in this world. Through our work we bind together our diverse ancestry and cultures, to honor and protect water and land.

As artists we tell stories, stories learned from each other, from land, water and all our relatives. We are listening, we are watching, we are holding up reflectors, waving flags, singing the horizon and telling the story of how we are now. As artists we are making visions and asking how we can be, what we can make for our children, and our grandchildren’s children.’