In My Hands Are Galaxies is Cyrah Dardas’ solo exhibition (October 14th- November 18th) of work examining ritualized art-making and relational ecosystems that extend beyond human kin. The Opening Reception is on Saturday, October 14th, 6-9pm at 2845 Gratiot Avenue.
This exhibit invites viewers to consider the processes of growing, foraging and engaging with different elements to create the tapestries and watercolor paintings as portals to re-establish our participation in stewarding life and re-belonging to the Earth. Dardas’ practice is a tool for remembering as a way to create an archive for a future of interspecies reciprocity.
Read our interview with Cyrah Dardas below.
Dardas references the tradition of SWANA tapestry-making, symbolism and stylization as a means of keeping the memory of relationships to their ancestral land intact as a framework employed through their practice for being in relationship to this, ‘newer home.’ Using their handmade botanical inks, dyes and watercolors, they created a series of moon studies that demonstrate a deep connection between the land to the sky.
From the artist:
“I make work with earth and for nature; wood, paper, metals, creating botanical inks, dyes and watercolors made from foraged plants, charred willow bark, ochres, ash and stone. I consider this process as an interspecies communion that deeply informs the form and function the work takes. Colors are derived from plants, and the natural textures and materials that nature creates reflect the landscape and identity of the land I exist on.
“I think about my practice as a container for collective remembering that strives to honor and re-centralize the wisdom and memory alive in my blood and to uncover or recover forgotten knowledge. This body of work examines tapestry-making as a healing technology that re-establishes forgotten networks of relationship between humans and non-human life.”
The exhibition includes a short film entitled, “To Each of Those, The Ones Who Leave,” made in collaboration with artist Na Forest Lim. It is an archive of a site-specific practice in the backyard of a former home. Cyrah began to process their experience of displacement as a result of familial and intimate partner violence to articulate healing through a somatic relating to Earth and place to find ‘home’ through an experiential and relational movement-based learning. Their practice is deeply rooted in ritualized art-making, using the process itself as a tool for grief composition and collective healing.
Cyrah Dardas is a Queer, eco-feminist artist and care worker living in Detroit /Waawiyaatanong, Anishinaabe territory. Dardas uses their art practice as a tool in remembering the lost relationships between humans and non-human beings as a result of the extractive nature of capitalism by regulating and healing our collective body to restore interdependency.
Their work is informed by experiences in childcare, gardening, as a member of an artist cooperative, Portal For and practice of using natural fibers, earth pigments, and botanical inks. They are a recipient of the Emerging Artist Fellowship, supported by the Knight Foundation.
“My paintings and textiles are cosmological maps made with place based elements of my surroundings that breathe new life into these elements through abstraction and sacred geometry. In my sculpture work, I reference the dictated mathematical progression of plant growth, shell formation, and the fractal mechanics of seed pod dispersion to draw attention to their intelligent design.
Referencing the traditions of Persian tapestry and kilims, I make my work with natural and recycled materials; wood, paper, metals, botanical inks and dyes and watercolors I make myself from foraged plants, charred willow bark, ochres, ash and stone. I consider the process an interspecies communion that deeply informs the form and function that the work will take. The colors derived from the plants, the natural textures and materials nature creates all reflect the landscape and identity of the land I occupy. By honoring its origins, I’m unlocking hidden stories through an interspecies communion that reveals its future.”
Curiosity, biomimicry, and connection are integral to my practice as it is a reflective and relational process. I seek a re-belonging to this land that can only be possible with deep study and rigorous listening. I do this for personal liberation and to move toward a regenerative way of being on this land and with others who also inhabit it.
Through my practice, I address the ecofeminist parallels in the treatment of femmes and gender-expansive folks and the mistreatment of the earth by toxic hierarchical systems like the patriarchy. I seek to reestablish forgotten and disrupted relationships and patterns between humans and the rest of creation that have been disrupted by these systems. I suggest our pathway towards this reintegration of humans and earth is to dismantle settler colonial anthropocentrism, heterosupremacy, and the constructed binary of gender within ourselves.
“I use my art practice as a portal and process of regulation and healing for myself from these systems, and offer it to others through ceremony to restore our collective ecological body and return to interdependence. This guiding philosophy of ecofeminism, leads me to an interdisciplinary practice that observes, engages and celebrates life in its various phases and forms.
My work is an archive of continual search and discovery, a somatic remembering, a way of engaging in and relating to the world, and a practice of composting grief. I come to this practice as a survivor of intimate partner violence living with PTSD, co-creating frameworks of care and belonging to heal and chart out pathways towards repair for myself and those that engage with my work.”
When did you know you were an artist?
I feel like I never really made a conscious decision to begin an art practice, it was just a way for me to connect to myself and those around me. I’ve phased in and out of different formats and mediums throughout my life depending on my access to things and interests. As an early career educator in my early 20’s I began to understand the beneficial effects of a creative practice on human/ child development from a more objective perspective. I began to understand how empowering and radical it was to develop a strong sense of self and cultivate one’s imagination through creative practice.
Through this, I feel like I grew in my dedication to a social/ liberation centered art practice for myself and in classrooms. At that point I also began to connect to other people who were similarly dedicated to social practice which inspired me and I began taking my own art practice more seriously and dedicating time and energy to it more intentionally. Now I see my art practice as intertwined with living and try to incorporate an artful approach to all things.
Why is art a part of your life?
I’m not sure if I could separate Art out of life. Art making is for me a translation of the sensorial and emotional experience of being alive. My creative practice feels deeply connected to my being human and my being human feels very connected to 1- being a learner and, 2- the desire to connect with others and experience/ share love. I feel like I also see other things and people making art all the time even when they maybe don’t refer to it as such.
What concept or theme and medium are you most interested in currently?
I am very interested in fiber arts as a medium and I think that even as I expand my work beyond traditional fiber arts I will always think of myself that way. It is definitely my earliest practice and one that seems to interest me the most. In Persian and many of the cultures from that region of the world, tapestry, rugs and Kilims hold importance not only because they are known as valuable but because they are made utilizing ancient technologies and relationships to land. Their patterns are composed of symbols that tell stories that hold embedded wisdom and offer protection to those who wield them. Because of this familial history, fiber arts have always felt to me like the root of our relationship to each other and to land.
Textiles are a practice of care and divine intertwining with the beings around us because these tapestries and rugs I am referencing are typically composed of materials that make up the natural world of the region; camel, goat and plant fibers, and they are colored with natural dyes, like matter, root, indigo, and many other botanical and earth derived pigments. In my own practice, I attempt to continue this process as a way to maintain an orientation to care and to place.
What is it about creating your own paints most interesting to you?
I have been really enchanted by learning how to make dyes and paint. I think I find it interesting because it feels like a form of interspecies collaboration. I am interested in the ways that folks integrate elements of Place or the landscape and ecosystem into their art making practice, and how those artifacts become a reflection of the ecology they are made from. I really wanted to learn those processes and pull from histories of people making in this way, so I began researching ancient paint and dye making techniques and just immersing myself in the practice. In connection to this, I cultivated a growing practice that included some dye plants as well as many edible and pollinator plants.
Gardening, foraging and exploring in this way has taught me so much about play, interdependency, and reciprocity. Some of the earth pigments I use are still sourced from other folks who harvest ochres from different parts of the country, but I do try to source them myself as much as possible. There are definitely a lot of challenges and limitations to making paint this way. Simply put, it takes more time. I spent a large portion of my time since receiving the Emerging Artist Fellowship and solo show with PLAYGROUND just learning and re-learning and playing around with paint. Then, once I learned about that, I had to re-learn how to actually paint with them because they handle differently than other watercolors or inks.
I am still really early in my practice and as I said I rely on sourcing raw pigment from more experienced people sometimes. I sometimes even ‘cheat’ and use gouache paint to get the colors to differentiate from one another because they can be a bit too similar at times. For me, limitations are exciting challenges though, and often opportunities to discover something typically overlooked or under-appreciated.
How does the process begin, and how long does it take to create from concept to execution?
It really depends on what kind of paint I’m attempting to make and varies on the source I am working with. When I make the inks out of things like found copper, my role is mostly to instigate oxidation using something like vinegar and allowing for enough time to pass for the material to be broken down.
My favorite pigment to make is still the first one I ever made which is from carbonized Willow reeds. In this process, I harvest dried Willow branches from Belle Isle in small batches. I build a large fire, generally in my backyard, and pack the willow into small tin cans. I bury the willow in the coals of the fire and let the fire burn hot for a few hours. After everything has cooled I dig out the cans and open them up to reveal this intense black powder. Then, I mix that down into a paste with gum arabic until it’s a consistency that I like. Recently I had the opportunity to travel to North Carolina with my long time friend and collaborator Amas Mesu and harvest some gorgeous red and orangey ochres from rock faces in the Blue Ridge mountains to make paint with. The Black and white photos in my exhibition are a result of that experience.
What inspires you?
I am really inspired by writers. I have a really hard time translating myself into words and I am always so impressed with those who are able to capture ideas and bring them to life through their writing or poetry. I love sci-fi /speculative fiction, mysticism and folktales. I love poetry and I especially love hearing poetry read out loud. Sending thanks to Room Project and all the years of incredible poets I’ve heard read their work there. And, to my friend and mentor Nate Mullen for introducing me to Poetry Unbound which is an incredible podcast/ archive.
Has the concept(s) or theme that your work revolves around evolved over time?
Thematically my work in art, curating, organizing and my work in education has often been related to survivorship and liberation; addressing the realities of gender based oppression, interpersonal violence, oppression and its effects. The impetus for this work stems from personal experience with these things that continue to exist within me, and my process of healing from them, but also my study of systemic violence and oppression. I extrapolate that what has taken place in my life and to my body and spirit is connected to a larger system that was made to function this way. That our personal safety and liberation from harm is directly connected to our collective safety and liberation.
This study comes from a desire to uncover and unlearn my own internalization of oppressive systems as well as to better understand and hold compassion for how they show up in myself and others in order to address and eradicate them. My contemporary examination of these topics is much more centered in my process and practice of care and healing from the grief associated with acknowledging and addressing how pervasive these oppressive systems are within us. I study grief-processing as a framework that could be applied to oneself, as an individual, or the collective whole. I do this through mimicking the restorative technologies of the natural world. Composting grief like rotten leaves decomposes on soft soil, supported by an ecosystem around it that relies on the carbon from that leaf to continue on, in balance.
In this body of work in particular, I feel like I have shifted away from narratives of harm to a narrative of re-belonging to oneself and the intertwining with other beings. I have collaborated deeply with one or more people and many other beings in all of this work. I have included different phases of making the work in the show to uplift and emphasize the process over the product, as I see it as the most impactful part. I don’t want to center the harm and I don’t want to center perpetual struggle or even our/my resilience or strength although I/ we have certainly employed those aspects of myself/ ourselves. I want to articulate the delicacy and pleasure in healing from these systems and experiences and engage in a reclamation of joy and pleasure.
How does using textiles, natural fabric dye and quilt-making shape your artistic practice?
Aside from personally having a long standing relationship to fiber arts, I think it is a really innately human thing to do; To make with and adorn yourself with things that come from the world around you. It seems that a large part of the process of healing is a coming home to your body. For me, working with fibers in this way has been a way to integrate this kind of somatic awareness into my art practice.
All of the movements necessary for these processes engage the body and offer an opportunity for me to connect to myself, to connect to others and take notice. It’s a slow sinking into oneself through small gestures and simple repetitive actions. As I move through the process of growing a plant or walking in search of a certain material, I also get to notice more about those around me and learn about them; their ways of being, needs, and patterns; you get to forge an intimacy this way.
There are many different ways to make quilts but I personally really enjoy making them with other people, outside. Sometimes that means just passively ripping fabric strips while spending time with a friend in a park and sometimes that means literally sewing quilts with folks out on a farm in eastern market. This past summer I had the opportunity to host a natural dying and quilting workshop with Keep Growing Detroit, an organization whose mission is to promote a food sovereign city where the majority of fruits and vegetables consumed by Detroiters are grown by residents within the city’s limits.
We spent over a month meeting up on the farm and learning to make color from the plants that are grown on the farm, through Keep Growing Detroit’s garden resource program or things that can be foraged in Detroit. We then learned some basic quilt-making processes and literally made three quilts outside together. I can honestly say it was one of the most fun teaching experiences I have ever had.
One of the quilts that we made together is being auctioned off during the exhibition and all of the proceeds from the sale will go directly back to supporting the world building work that KGD does.
Beyond learning about the craft of dying or quilting, I think that when we engage in these processes together they can unlock some really old memories in our bodies that can be a portal to generating more restorative ways of being with one another. Belonging is a core need and without it many of us are chronically suffering from feelings of abandonment and disenfranchisement.
While I never want to over romanticize the past, prior generations, or create oversimplifications of goodness or rightness within certain cultures of people over others, I do believe that there are/were times that people were more aware of their role within the world. We were more integrated into the fabric of the ecosystems we lived within. The continuation of settler colonialism and genocide against indigenous peoples takes us further away from these knowledges and technologies and perpetuates the fallacy of separateness between humans and other living beings. I think by tapping into our older practices like these, I am attempting to remember more regenerative ways of relating. Perhaps if we do so, as a society we will strengthen in our demands for land being given back to those who know how to steward it.
Do you have a favorite technique?
Right now I am really curious about an old resist dye technique process that uses clay. I am sure many cultures have experimented with such practices but I am currently researching and learning from an Indian tradition. I like to learn old techniques that relate to land and places and attempt to replicate them here in Detroit with locally sourced or grown materials.
The process is essentially collecting clay from the ground in and mixing it with gum arabic ( or hopefully some other more locally sourced tree sap) to create a paste. Then, you use it as a paint to create designs or stamp it onto fabric to create patterns. Once it dries you can dip your fabric in a natural dye. Because of the tree sap, the paste doesn’t wash away in the dye leaving the designs you’ve created intact. When you have achieved the color you desire from the dye, Then you use a warm bath of water to dissolve the paste.
What about your creative process have you found to be the most successful for you?
Aligning my creative practice to what feels pleasurable for my body as much as possible.
What inspired the concept behind the show you are installing?
The exhibition is titled after a poem called, small talk or in my hand galaxies, written by Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley.
it looks like the thief rocketed
their whole self through
the bull’s eye of my driver’s side door
and you’re not wrong to expect
the old joke about there being
nothing in my car worth the thieving
or maybe i’ve caught you eye rolling
please god not another
poem about windows but i cross my
fingers hope to die suck on diesel
and be hogtied i’ll avoid simile
for the eye and soul and i’ll be
careful as the fixer’s hands
who came to pry waterlogged
lining from my inner door
her small boots crunching sun in the
glittered puddle of fractured glass
i think how i didn’t think to sweep
but even so she is still kind i think
to get her a glass of tap water now
but then think of all the stairs
she says this big sol reminds her
of cuba y tu she asks but i don’t
relish speaking spanish anymore
i tell her no i have always lived
here in miami i lie but offer my father
was a mason and bueno too at that
i’ve given her this one fractled truth as if
it could be understood not to mistake
my soft handshake for ignorance
of all the working classes but she
is not thinking of me only the door’s
motor grinding she asks but what do i do
i hope she will ask
if maybe i am a mason myself but no
i say i am maybe a writer
me too she beams and offers a full palm
of what she’d vacuumed from the doorframe
shattered glass beads of blue refraction
wonder she says wonder at all they have
seen she insists ver towards the tiny eyelets
en mi mano galaxias she says and i wonder
how often i have mistaken myself
for the seer for the see-er
and others simply as the seen.
This poem resonates with me for many reasons, but in particular because it depicts a feeling that I often have when learning something new about something that I so frequently interact with and perhaps have in the past overlooked. I feel like I can place myself in the experience of both of the characters in the poem. One, who is simply trying to survive through a low level emergency, possibly moving in haste and disconnected. The other, very present, engaged and curious. Wondering about the origins of something so mundane as shattered glass- thinking about all the things that glass has seen, what it was before even being glass, and what it will possibly be afterwards.
It feels to me that this reflection prompts a paradigm shift for the narrator and makes them question how they have gone so long without questioning their position and place in the world of things.
As I have begun to grow my own food and dye and make paint from mundane objects and refuse that I find in the streets, I have been able to stay curious and present more consistently. It has peeled back some of the callus-ing I think many of us begin to experience through aging and surviving all of life’s low, medium and high level emergencies, urgencies and needs of us.
What are you working on and looking forward to in the near future?
Right now I am returning to a project I actually began last Spring while in residency in a rural part of Michigan. The project was / is called conversations with the wind and it’s a public sculpture project and social practice that explores harvesting electrical power through mimicking the technology seen in seed pods that use wind to support their distribution. Each sculpture is going to be a free-standing kinetic sculpture made of metal and installed on sites experiencing high winds due to housing demolition and deforestation.
Last year, I archived my process of observation and interaction with seed pods that guide the sculpture’s design through sketches and film photography to illustrate the process of abstracting their form. I also developed several prototypes, but they were unfortunately stolen from the place that I installed them so… I took some time away from the project.
This year I am going to return to it though, and my collaborator Jon Ward and I are going to play more with the energy harvesting potential of the sculptures which feels exciting. I’m very Inspired by the possibilities of turning towards more regenerative design and technology found in nature.
How long have you lived in Detroit?
Approximately 12 years.
Does living in Detroit influence your work or subject matter/style/approach? If so, please explain.
Detroit is influential in every part of the work I make as well as who I am. This show feels a bit like a love letter to this place. When making the work for this show there were so many points at which I was just content with the exchange between my body and this place being the “work”. The interaction between you and another is art.
Not only is the work primarily made of things I’ve found and grown here but several of the works are my way of archiving my memories of homes I have made here in the city. Others reference moments in time that I wanted to immortalize, like when my beloved friend Liz Kennedy and I watched the sunset, made red by wildfire smoke on the beach together. It was this intense moment of intimacy between us and the earth. Like we were all seeing each other in this raw state of weariness. I want to remember the feeling of that day not because the event was particularly rare, unfortunately, but because we were present to it and we were together.
A reminder… “Safety is not the absence of threat, it is the presence of connection”
– Gabor Maté
My art practice offers me a way to get to know this place in a really intimate way and to memorialize the places, moments and relationships that have shaped me into who I am, even those that were difficult or painful. These things are how and why I see the world the way I do and who I get to see it with and I am grateful for that sight.
Is there anything you’d like to add?
My quilt, “The Waters” will be auctioned to support the work of Keep Growing Detroit fundraiser: https://go.rallyup.com/quiltsforkgd
Join Keep Growing Detroit in raising funds for the 2024 Garden Resource Program (GRP). The GRP supports urban gardening in the city by providing high-quality resources to family, community, school, and market gardens in Detroit, Highland Park, and Hamtramck. Participants receive seeds, transplants, personalized garden assistance from our staff, and a connection to an incredible network of gardeners, farmers, and advocates for a thriving food system across the city. In 2023 the GRP supported over 2,200 growers in Detroit, Highland Park, and Hamtramck.
The quilt for auction was dyed, designed, and hand quilted over the course of 4 community quilting sessions held at KGD Farm. The dyes were made American indigo, foraged black walnut, and spinach & cabbage grown at KGD Farm. The large quilt is on display at “In My Hands Are Galaxies” by Cyrah Dardas at Playground Detroit, Saturday, October 14 – Saturday, November 18. It measures 76×84 inches. The two smaller quilts, pictured above, are 45×60 inches.
Feel free to share something you think the audience might want to know or that would be helpful.
I’d like to say a massive thank you to my collaborators, Amas Mesu, Na Forest Lim for seeing me and helping me archive my process.
Thank you to the participants of Keep Growing Detroit’s dye and quilting workshop. And sending love and appreciation to the queer growers of Detroit like Fennigan’s Farm, Lee Kornhouser, Alexandra Virginia Martin, Anita Singh, Eriu Martinez and Lola Kristi who generously donated seeds, blooms and plants from their gardens for my various processes and projects.
OPENING RECEPTION: In My Hands Are Galaxies Solo Exhibition opens to the public on Saturday, October 14th from 6-9pm, and is on view through Saturday, November 18th, located at 2845 Gratiot Avenue, Detroit, MI 48207. No RSVP is required to attend.
