Faculty of Art

Drawing and Painting

Timo Cheah

Land Acknowledgment

This exhibition, and the practice it represents, emerges from multiple Indigenous territories—lands that were never ceded, and where my presence has always been temporary, conditional, and as a worker within industrial systems that have long dispossessed Indigenous peoples of their lands and disrupted traditional ecological relationships. The work presented here was conceptualized and fabricated in Tkaronto, on the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples. This land is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples.The materials and experiences that inform this installation were gathered across the unceded ancestral lands of the Cheslatta Carrier Nation, the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Nation, the Wet’suwet’en Nation, the Nlaka’pamux Nation, the West Moberly First Nation, the McLeod Lake Indian Band, the Tsay Keh Dene Nation, the Kwadacha Nation, the Doig River First Nation, the Blueberry River First Nation, the Halfway River First Nation, the Tsi Del Del First Nation, and the Treaty 8 First Nations. I worked on these lands as a seasonal treeplanter—performing labor that contributes to the industrial reforestation of territories that were never ceded, and where my presence was always transient. The conceptual framework of this work also engages the Indigenous lands of my paternal ancestry in Malaysia, including territories of the Orang Asli, the Dayak (Sarawak), the Kadazan-Dusun (Sabah), the Iban, Bidayuh, Kenyah, Kayan, Kedayan, Lunbawang, Punan, Bisayah, Kelabit, Berawan, Kejaman, Ukit, Sekapan, Melanau, and Penan peoples. I have not yet had the opportunity to visit these lands or establish relationships with these communities.I want to name these territories not as a form of completion or absolution, but as an acknowledgment of debt—both the literal debt of having worked on lands I do not belong to, and the ongoing debt of colonial extraction that makes my practice possible. Naming these nations without having established reciprocal relationships with them is itself a form of extraction: taking their names to legitimate my work without offering anything in return. I offer these names with humility, knowing that acknowledgment without relationship is insufficient, and that the work of building those relationships—if they are welcome—extends far beyond this exhibition.The four aluminum antlers that parallel this gallery installation will be placed back on the lands where I worked—not as compensation, not as resolution, but as a gesture of thanks that can never be sufficient, only sincere. These offerings will simply be placed, and left to accumulate weather, time, and whatever meaning the lands and their inhabitants choose to make of them. I encourage visitors to learn about the nations whose territories we occupy today, and to consider how our presence here continues colonial relationships—even when we attempt to work against them.