Barry Ace
Migration Scroll, 2018 based on the Anishinaabe birch bark scrolls, but upcycled to a digital technological tableaux. Mixed media, 8 × 20 × 5 in
Migration Scroll is a work that is a confluence between the historical and contemporary referencing sacred Anishinaabe birchbark scrolls that once acted as a library system storing important spiritual, cultural, historical, and medicinal information in the form of etched mnemonic iconography symbols. Today, in the digital age, electronic components store information replacing these ancient repository systems. A book form is made from electronic circuit boards with electronic floral motifs referencing Anishinaabe medicine flowers. Strings of white heart trade beads (with a red exterior and a white interior) attached to a circuit board reference the longstanding trade relations between settler and Indigenous people and can be read together with the strands of communication wire as the transmission of pixels feeding technological colonization and culture change in the digital age. The two feathers and metal cones further reference the digital codification of traditional Indigenous knowledge that is quickly being absorbed into these new systems of archiving information.