In the two commissioned short videos presented at Sankofa Square, Montreal-based artist Alisi Telengut sequences photographs of plant environments ranging from underwater ecosystems to flower shops, public parks, and botanical gardens. Loosely translating to “go back and get it,” “Sankofa” is a Twi word from Ghana suggesting a return to one’s roots. In this context, the images remind us of nature’s richness and our need to reconnect with it, especially amid an industrial, urban space. This contrast highlights the natural world’s coexistence with—and challenges to—human-made environments, reflecting on the critical theme of their inevitable and significant interdependence.

At the center of the city—the convergence of shops, skyscrapers, subways, trams, traffic, ads, pigeons, and people—Telengut reflects upon the renaming and becoming of Sankofa Square. Ruminating on the word “Sankofa” and its meanings,  and lingering on the “it” of “go back and get it,” a few questions arise: what are the lost, buried, removed, taken its that once inhabited the Square? What remains of it there? How might we retrace, reconnect, resurface it? 

Through Sankofa Flora, Telengut propagates a different rhythmic beat into the urban makeup of the Square, full of botanical flora, and tuned by intuition. The videos amalgamate frame-by-frame images of various botanical environments which Telengut has passed through. Organic structures and matter emerge, moving, spreading, filling, and overwhelming the screens through zoomed-in details, sometimes lower-resolution and with imperfect lighting. There is abundance, there is growth, and there is a different variety of development at play. 

Sankofa Flora is both a reminder and a reflection of the interdependence of humans and plant life that is a constant, regardless of changing landscapes. Through the virtual transplantation of these living organisms into the site, Telengut hopes to open up space for new questions about coexistence and human relationships with the natural world. Once we have named it, what might be revealed for us to learn and hold accountability for?

Presented by CONTACT Photography Festival & Toronto Reel Asian Film Festival, supported by Sankofa Square.

Curated by Kelly Lui

• Alisi Telengut is a Canadian artist and filmmaker of Mongolian roots. Her work has been screened and exhibited internationally, including at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures (USA), Whitney Biennial (USA), Sundance Film Festival (USA), TIFF and TIFF Canada's Top Ten, Annecy International Animation Festival (France), Biennial VIDEONALE at Museum of Painting and Contemporary Art Bonn (Germany), OSTRALE Biennale (Germany), Anthology Film Archives (USA), CICA Museum (South Korea), UNESCO World Heritage Site Zollverein (Germany), Images Festival (Canada), Image Forum (Japan), among others. Telengut is currently an assistant professor in Film Animation at Concordia University in Montreal (Canada).

• Kelly Lui is an arts worker with an interest in prioritizing care practices and interrogating sustainability within creative careers. She is the Shorts Programmer at the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival and is a firm lover of noodles. Outside of film, she is a founding member of TACLA, a collective dedicated to nurturing and activating a living archive, and one of four momos behind the zine publication, A MomoRoom. Kelly completed a Masters of Environmental Studies from York University with a focus on critical food pedagogy, spaces of intimacy and labour, and community arts.