Tanya Lukin Linklater: Storm song

Commissioned for Carried by rivers, held by lands, Tanya Lukin Linklater’s Storm song is a site-responsive installation of sound, textiles, and places of rest. Overlooking kisiskâciwani-sîpiy—the South Saskatchewan River—the work extends Lukin Linklater’s ongoing consideration of weather, temporality, and embodied knowledges.

At the centre of the installation is a narrative audio work presented at the same time each day. Emerging from ongoing conversations and relationships with Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Joely BigEagle-Kequahtooway, and Yvonne Tiger, the work centers Indigenous women’s knowledge and lived experiences of weather, land, and memory across the Great Plains. At other times, an ambient audio composition inhabits the space, drawing on environmental sound and the temporal rhythms of the prairie landscape. It invites visitors into sustained attention to the river, the land, and the changing conditions that shape them.

Textile works, wooden benches, and places of rest form a second constellation within the installation. Drawing on materials and forms that recur throughout Lukin Linklater’s practice—including all-weather canvas, wool blankets, kohkom scarves, and forms drawn from the prairie ecosystem—these works extend the artist’s ongoing engagement with what she calls felt structures. Lukin Linklater describes these as “atmospheres that hold us.”