Score No. 24a
“The way that the healing happens, for us though, is through honoring the water, honoring the land, and honoring the interconnections of the healing as circular, like a spiral. That’s the context.”
— Grace L. Dillon
Wonderer
Part I
Song: The Other by Dorian Concept
filmed by Liam Pitt
Part II
Song: >;0 (feat. Vegyn) by Mk.Gee
filmed by Jude Ferrara
Danced and edited by Angela Lian
Score No. 9b
Memory triggers actions. Think of a soft time.
Transfer it to a being that needs it.
Score No. 1a
Your favorite tree asks you to dance.
Score No. 1b
“When we understand the landscape as a body, sense becomes a quality that is not exclusive to humans. Every layer is an impression and expression.”
— Sabina Holzer
Score No. 7a
Every gesture, a fluid framework. Every thought, a rhythmic mutation.
Saturate with joy.
Score No. 10a
Pick a stone to be your bone. Touch the stone to touch a part of ourselves. What is touched is also formed.
Score No. 4b
Has your skin been caressed today?
Score No. 4a
The land holds memory. The sea holds memory. Our bodies hold memory. Replace memory with trauma. Replace memory with pain. Replace memory with hope.
Allow Me to Dream A Body With You by Sabina Holzer
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Revisions Magazine
Revive Magazine
Emergence Magazine Issue 5: Time
Making Kin by cthulhu books
VIDEO ARTWORK
2021–2024
Solo Exhibition by Angela Lian
Show documentation can be viewed here
Opening Reception October 17th, 2024*
6-8pm at CMA Gallery
Aquinas Hall, Mount Saint Mary College
330 Powell Ave, Newburgh, NY
*Show will be on view until January 2024
CMA Gallery presents Moving Making Moving: Embodied Ecologies, a solo exhibition by Hudson Valley-based artist and designer, Angela Lian.
Moving Making Moving: Embodied Ecologies adopts its title from the artist’s undergraduate thesis, which presented movement and chance as a framework for creation and body processing. This exhibition takes another step, fashioning a performative contemplation space for dreaming within bodies—human and non-human. As our socio-ecological wellbeing continues to deteriorate, Lian takes inspiration from ecologists and artists such as Robin Wall Kimmerer and Sabina Holzer to craft interpretive scores for viewers to perform—offering kinship to the human landscape.
Across her video artwork, Lian combines dance and design to imbue personal themes like memory, chronic pain, and loneliness with tenderness and play. She embodies a flower at times to personify the process of flourishment. The exhibition features a poster series titled Memory Garden and twelve video art pieces from 2021–2024, alongside two walls of handwritten scores titled Scores for Dreaming. These scores pay homage to the relationships between the human and non-human consciousness of pain, memory, and ecology.
“When we understand the landscape as a body, sense becomes a quality that is not exclusive to humans.” —Sabrina Holzer
Angela Lian is an artist and designer based in Hudson Valley, New York. Her work ranges from conventional identities to illustration, printed matter, and video art. She is currently a graphic designer and video artist at BAGGU. Across her personal work, Lian combines dance, design, and analog techniques to imbue themes like memory, chronic pain, and loneliness with tenderness and play. Her work has been recognized by It’s Nice That, TYPE01, Canvas Rebel, and AIGA Eye On Design. Find more of her work here or dive into her mind on her Are.na.
SCORES FOR DREAMING
1a. Your favorite tree asks you to dance.
2a. Trace the body as it remembers.
3a. If you’re not sure if something is sustainable, ask yourself, can I do this forever?
4a. The land holds memory. The sea holds memory. Our bodies hold memory. Replace memory with trauma. Replace memory with pain. Replace memory with hope.
5a. “We need to learn to listen.”
— Robin Wall Kimmerer
6a. Focus on a being who shares your habitat: plant, animal, element. Imagine a memory of joy in their body. Move your body to emulate the memory.
7a. Every gesture, a fluid framework. Every thought, a rhythmic mutation. Saturate with joy.
8a. Sit in front of someone. Without interruption, share your current feelings for five minutes. Switch roles and repeat.
9a. When was the last time you danced?
10a. Pick a stone to be your bone. Touch the stone to touch a part of ourselves. What is touched is also formed.
11a. Choose a piece of nature to duet with. Notice the shadow of a tree; the string of ants, the dance of clouds in the sky.
12a. Seek nourishment in the individual and the collective.
13a. Humans only live above ground. Non-human species live both above and below. It’s time to get low and look closer.
14a. Improvise a movement conversation with another person. Question and answer, gesture and flow. What feelings, emotions, and pains arise? How can this plurality foster generosity?
15a. Collect, Condense, Ascend. Change the context, do it again.
16a. On your next walk, observe nature’s rhythms. Do you feel the world move through you?
17a. Trace the outline of your hand into the air. Hold this traced hand in your own. Return to the present and guide them.
18a. Collect 10 rocks. Every rock is a pain you carry. For every rock you release, replace it with a leaf. Every leaf is compassion you pick up.
19a. Your heart asks you to rest.
20a. Nature is a source of balance. Find a horizon line to fix your eyes on. One hand on heart, one hand on belly, lure yourself closer.
21a. With writing utensil in hand, take the mind on a walk. Pick roses. Release thorns. Seek buds.
22a. Let’s embody your favorite animal. How do they dance and move their appendages? What song would they dance to?
23a. When you shake the trees, fruits fall. When you shake the body, fruits fall.
24a. “The way that the healing happens, for us though, is through honoring the water, honoring the land, and honoring the interconnections of the healing as circular, like a spiral. That’s the context.”
— Grace L. Dillon
2a. Trace the body as it remembers.
3a. If you’re not sure if something is sustainable, ask yourself, can I do this forever?
4a. The land holds memory. The sea holds memory. Our bodies hold memory. Replace memory with trauma. Replace memory with pain. Replace memory with hope.
5a. “We need to learn to listen.”
— Robin Wall Kimmerer
6a. Focus on a being who shares your habitat: plant, animal, element. Imagine a memory of joy in their body. Move your body to emulate the memory.
7a. Every gesture, a fluid framework. Every thought, a rhythmic mutation. Saturate with joy.
8a. Sit in front of someone. Without interruption, share your current feelings for five minutes. Switch roles and repeat.
9a. When was the last time you danced?
10a. Pick a stone to be your bone. Touch the stone to touch a part of ourselves. What is touched is also formed.
11a. Choose a piece of nature to duet with. Notice the shadow of a tree; the string of ants, the dance of clouds in the sky.
12a. Seek nourishment in the individual and the collective.
13a. Humans only live above ground. Non-human species live both above and below. It’s time to get low and look closer.
14a. Improvise a movement conversation with another person. Question and answer, gesture and flow. What feelings, emotions, and pains arise? How can this plurality foster generosity?
15a. Collect, Condense, Ascend. Change the context, do it again.
16a. On your next walk, observe nature’s rhythms. Do you feel the world move through you?
17a. Trace the outline of your hand into the air. Hold this traced hand in your own. Return to the present and guide them.
18a. Collect 10 rocks. Every rock is a pain you carry. For every rock you release, replace it with a leaf. Every leaf is compassion you pick up.
19a. Your heart asks you to rest.
20a. Nature is a source of balance. Find a horizon line to fix your eyes on. One hand on heart, one hand on belly, lure yourself closer.
21a. With writing utensil in hand, take the mind on a walk. Pick roses. Release thorns. Seek buds.
22a. Let’s embody your favorite animal. How do they dance and move their appendages? What song would they dance to?
23a. When you shake the trees, fruits fall. When you shake the body, fruits fall.
24a. “The way that the healing happens, for us though, is through honoring the water, honoring the land, and honoring the interconnections of the healing as circular, like a spiral. That’s the context.”
— Grace L. Dillon
1b. “When we understand the landscape as a body, sense becomes a quality that is not exclusive to humans. Every layer is an impression and expression.”
— Grace L. Dillon
2b. Make space. Plant seeds. Reach out to a friend.
3b. Find a body of water. Fill a jar. Nourish 10 living things with this water.
4b. Has your skin been caressed today?
5b. “Plants know how to make medicine from sun and water and then give it away.”
— Robin Wall Kimmerer
6b. How can you support mother nature? How can mother nature support you?
7b. With movement and gesture, perform the growth of the seed in the ground. Find a plant that becomes your audience. Note the emotions that arise.
8b. “If mosses dream, I suspect they dream of rain.”
— Robin Wall Kimmerer
9b. Memory triggers actions. Think of a soft time. Transfer it to a being that needs it.
10b. Land is always recording, always remembering. With one hand as ice and the other as fire, imagine the memory of Earth forming a valley.
11b. Pick a body part in pain. Move or massage it 10 circles in one direction. Then 10 circles in the opposite direction. Repeat with a new body part.
12b. Reframe. Their pain is our pain. List who this affects.
13b. “If the city is the heart, the rivers, streams, and canals are the blood, and our thoughts and actions are the nutrients. What, then, would there be to do?”
— Sabina Holzer
14b. Stretch the soul to the sky. Observe what collects and carries between the movements in your spine. Offer kinship.
15b. “Trees act as a collective. Through unity, survival. All flourishing is mutual.”
— Robin Wall Kimmerer
16b. Sit in front of someone. Without interruption, start with “I want” and share for three minutes. Switch roles and repeat.
17b. “How can we get ourselves to understand that the earth is a gift again? If all the world is a commodity, how poor we grow. When all the world is a gift in motion, how wealthy we become.”
— Robin Wall Kimmerer
18b. Let go of three things.
19b. In these enormous connections, find the knots. Loosen to open them, give them space.
20b. Sun and water are both life and energy. What is your sun and what is your water?
21b. Let the memory of your hands recall creations of tenderness.
22b. Nature as a playground. On your next walk, collect everything that calls to you. Using these natural elements as building blocks, build bodies and build forms.
23b. Hold the head to quiet the bees in the mind. Will it matter in five years? Release the head to expand the space in the mind. What will matter in five years?
24b. Find a tree that will become your wishing tree. Write a wish and hang it on the tree. Repeat when it feels right.
— Grace L. Dillon
2b. Make space. Plant seeds. Reach out to a friend.
3b. Find a body of water. Fill a jar. Nourish 10 living things with this water.
4b. Has your skin been caressed today?
5b. “Plants know how to make medicine from sun and water and then give it away.”
— Robin Wall Kimmerer
6b. How can you support mother nature? How can mother nature support you?
7b. With movement and gesture, perform the growth of the seed in the ground. Find a plant that becomes your audience. Note the emotions that arise.
8b. “If mosses dream, I suspect they dream of rain.”
— Robin Wall Kimmerer
9b. Memory triggers actions. Think of a soft time. Transfer it to a being that needs it.
10b. Land is always recording, always remembering. With one hand as ice and the other as fire, imagine the memory of Earth forming a valley.
11b. Pick a body part in pain. Move or massage it 10 circles in one direction. Then 10 circles in the opposite direction. Repeat with a new body part.
12b. Reframe. Their pain is our pain. List who this affects.
13b. “If the city is the heart, the rivers, streams, and canals are the blood, and our thoughts and actions are the nutrients. What, then, would there be to do?”
— Sabina Holzer
14b. Stretch the soul to the sky. Observe what collects and carries between the movements in your spine. Offer kinship.
15b. “Trees act as a collective. Through unity, survival. All flourishing is mutual.”
— Robin Wall Kimmerer
16b. Sit in front of someone. Without interruption, start with “I want” and share for three minutes. Switch roles and repeat.
17b. “How can we get ourselves to understand that the earth is a gift again? If all the world is a commodity, how poor we grow. When all the world is a gift in motion, how wealthy we become.”
— Robin Wall Kimmerer
18b. Let go of three things.
19b. In these enormous connections, find the knots. Loosen to open them, give them space.
20b. Sun and water are both life and energy. What is your sun and what is your water?
21b. Let the memory of your hands recall creations of tenderness.
22b. Nature as a playground. On your next walk, collect everything that calls to you. Using these natural elements as building blocks, build bodies and build forms.
23b. Hold the head to quiet the bees in the mind. Will it matter in five years? Release the head to expand the space in the mind. What will matter in five years?
24b. Find a tree that will become your wishing tree. Write a wish and hang it on the tree. Repeat when it feels right.
