In Nigamon/Tunai, multidisciplinary artists Émilie Monnet and Waira Nina transform the Studio into an immersive, multi-sensory experience. Their combination of ritual and audio documentary crafts a powerful rumination on environmental destruction, solidarity, and friendship between indigenous peoples. 

As the audience enters the performance space, we’re greeted by cleansing smoke and invited to sit on the stools and cushions scattered throughout – chairs are provided for additional accessibility. During this time, Monnet and Nina provide a sound bath through custom-made copper instruments, helping to ground us into the space. 

Over the course of 90 minutes, the two artists move throughout the space performing mirrored ablutions and actions from opposite sides. They pour, swirl, and submerge items in water to capture the element’s sonic nature that ordinarily escapes our notice, courtesy of the instruments created by Colombian artist and sound designer, Leonel Vásquez. Monnet and Nina also sing, imitate bird calls, play music, and synchronously grieve the destruction of the landscape before uniting in a poignant moment of unity.

The combined effort makes for a mesmerising display and creates a sense of connectedness between the two despite their physical distance – a theme that permeates throughout the piece. 

Monnet is from Canada and is of Anishinaabe and French descent, while Nina is Inga, hailing from the Colombian Amazon. Despite the distance between their homes, there’s a connection that belies both Monet and Nina’s 20-year friendship and Nigamon/Tunai as a whole. 

In their native languages, both nigamon and tunai translate to ‘song’, a fitting title given how they capture the voice of water, rocks, plants, and birds to create music. It’s a credit to the combined efforts of the sound team – Vásquez, Frannie Holder, and Frédéric Auger – as sound echoes and reverberates throughout the space to create a unique soundscape that wholly surrounds the audience rather than simply being projected at them. 

In one particularly powerful moment, audience members are guided to touch trees positioned throughout the Studio. As they do, singing emanates from the soil and they feel the sonic vibration, only for this song to be interrupted by the sounds of machinery, gunfire, and deforestation. Eventually this discordant racket drowns out the song, leading to a stark reminder of the continued destruction of the Amazon at an alarming rate. This ultimately leads to the greater message of the piece and underscores the solidarity that forms its beating heart.

The audio documentary that plays throughout the performance explains how the Inga’s cultural land is currently under threat from Canadian multinationals wanting to mine for copper. That same mineral is of great cultural significance to the Anishinaabe but was stripped from them by similar corporations years ago. This led to the destruction of cultural practices and traditions for the Anishinaabe, due to a lack of resources; ultimately leading these companies to turn to the Global South where indigenous groups face a similar fate.

It’s highly thought-provoking and leads to fascinating discussion in the post-show Q&A session. Far from your standard performance, Nigmanon/Tunai is a profoundly beautiful piece that simultaneously challenges our understanding of colonialism and its continued existence.