About Mmenwenmad

The Mmenwenmad series is a collection of photographs taken by artist, Raven Davis. Translated, To Save For Later, this series of works is rooted in acknowledging our physical bodies, and lived experience as a form of incalculable, non-written, intergenerational documentation. Through movement, sound, and the juxtaposition to land, body, the artist engages with a common archiving form that cannot contain, the continuum of one's lived experience, or intimate relationships with the land.

The artist explores transgenerational epigenetic inheritance from their mother, her life, relationship to land and history. How that has impacted, and evolved the artist's ways of knowing. Witnessing how others choose to engage with intellectual Indigenous knowledge, trauma, disability, transness, birth, death and the impact of human existence. What has been left out? In what ways do we limit ourselves, our capacities to experience, learn and evolve as a result of colonial interference and domestication? Contesting oppressive forms of curating and archiving, and questioning the value others place on our knowledge, experiences and histories, the artist imagines a system of archival that’s rooted in storytelling, movement, sound and non-written/verbal communication.

Drawing from the artists’ previous body of works with monuments, they’ve created temporary tributes honouring the water, land, sky world, and the human form they were gifted. The artist self-documents their body, small and centered in each photograph. Capturing the vastness of the land, water, in juxtaposition to their body. Examining what we have yet to learn about the land/water/universe) , our bodies and our history. What has been deemed “worthy” of saving, and what has been lost, and what has been intentionally left out.