River’s Invocations – Darlene St. Georges
River’s Invocations – Darlene St. Georges
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 6, 7pm – 9pm
This series of paintings emerged from my deep engagement with River as a sentient, sovereign being—with memory, voice, and story. These works are visual invocations, gestures of reverence and reciprocal witnessing. As an artist and creation-centred researcher, I approach River not as subject, but as co-creator—a living entity whose wisdom shapes the very process of my making.
My creative exploration for this series is grounded in the belief that River holds memory—remembering migrations, ceremonies, relational kin, along with floods, losses, and returns. River’s body archives time. I ask: What does it mean to be in ethical relation with water? What does it mean to be moved by River—emotionally, physically, spiritually, methodologically?
In this creative praxis, methodology emerges through my relationship with River—who influences my rhythm of making, sweeping gestures and movement, the refinement of expression, and the unfolding layered forms. As I move with River, River moves through me.
Some days, I walk along the coulee edges at Bull Trail Park and near Elizabeth Hall Wetland to witness the Oldman River’s breathe through morning light. Other days, I remember my encounters along the St. Lawrence River in Montreal, the Moose River on the James Bay coast, and the Milk River at Writing-on-Stone, places I’ve lived and visited. Sometimes, I weep in the studio—overcome by the felt presence of River’s invocations. These moments are not performative; they are offerings of vulnerability, shaped by what Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (2017) calls “grounded normativity”—a way of knowing through lived experience, rooted in reciprocal care with land and water. I explore River through Simpson’s (2025) teachings that water is not passive but resists colonial containment, that River carries knowledge and life in its cyclical movements, in its reciprocal rhythms with Earth’s terrain and the pulse of the cosmos. I consider River as both being and body—one that holds agency. To walk with River is to enter the law of reciprocity, which Gregory Cajete (2000) reminds us is a spiritual agreement—an understanding that guides our responsibilities within an interdependent world.
Through the creation of this work, I came to see that my brushstrokes are activated by this law. Thus, as I paint River, River also paints me. This co-becoming is how my artistic practice becomes an embodied ceremony—one that troubles the binary between human and more-than-human.
Each of the six paintings in River’s Invocations seeks to honor River as a living being and a living pedagogy. They trace the murmurations of spirit—the cosmological threads of bloodlines that pulse through water, land, and sky. In color, movement, composition, and spirit, this work calls attention to the sacredness of rivers and water, to their rights, and to their memory—reminding us that River speaks, moves, and holds memory. These invocations invite us to listen deeply, to respond with reverence and care, and to remember our place within the flow of relation.
References
Cajete, G. (2000). Native science: Natural laws of interdependence. Clear Light Publishers.
Simpson, L. B. (2017). As we have always done: Indigenous freedom through radical resistance. University of Minnesota Press.
Simpson, L. B. (2025). Theory of water. Random House.
Darlene St. Georges is a visual artist, poet, and creation-centred scholar. She is associate professor of art education at the University of Lethbridge. Her theoretical and creation-centred research recognizes the creative, critical, and performative ways of knowing the world. She embraces a metamorphosis of scholarship through a relational-aesthetic translation of voice, breath, body, and spirit.
“I would like to acknowledge Gushul Artist Residency, managed through the Department of Art, University of Lethbridge and nowheres edge residency for supporting my creation-centred research and the launch of River’s Invocations.”
Date:September 6th, 2025 - October 24th, 2025
Location:Casa - Passage Gallery
Casa Program Guide
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