Forgotten Language is a collection of works by Amanda Amour-Lynx which are performative acts of cultural reclamation. It documents the pursuit for radical self-acceptance, evident by the messy, untangling process that ensues when recovering lost histories. Stories are embedded linguistically through mnemonic and symbolic coding, abstraction, body movements and stored memories. Language is place. Place is being.
These studies are stories of returning to a knowledge that was taken away, and are reactions to how colonialism has affected the artist personally and intergenerationally (focusing on matters concerning the relationship to time and place; the difficulty of familial roots; complex blood memory; being of mixed heritage; lateral violence; and internalized racism). Forgotten Language is Amanda’s intent to heal ancestral wounds through acts of restoring cultural literacy in herself, existing on various planes of being, undoing and reclaiming.