Morph* Talk
Relief and Reconciliation with Varna

Filmstill OQILIALLANNEQ / RELIEF © Goethe-Institut

How can we understand what is lost? And how can those stories and knowleges be retrieved?

Drum dancer, performance artist and activist Varna was born in Greenland. In her art she is inspired by the old traditions of east Greenlandic drum dancing. Stemming from a long ancestral line of known drum dancers, she traces back to the legendary shaman and drum dancer Maratse. Their video work OQILIALLANNEQ / RELIEF is a multi-layered examination of the complexities of reconciling an internal lived process of restoring spiritual Inuit practices after colonial oppression with a reality of still ongoing systemic repression.