AFRAID NOT is a durational performance in which artist Cannupa Hanska Luger activates an entire gallery utilizing unfired clay, fiber and found materials to tie a physical and metaphorical line between an assortment of artist-made tools to their task, asserting the value of deep-time relationships and slow processes. Performed for over 3 hours on September 15 2019 at Stelo Arts and Culture Foundation, Portland, OR as part of the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s TBA:19 Performance Festival. This performance opened Luger’s solo exhibition A Frayed Not, and immersive installation which used speculative fiction to consider our relationship to time and space.

There is a line, that spans across time in a continuum. This line is the record of our existence and is woven into the very fabric of being. But this line, through tension or abrasion or brute force, has been cut. The edge of this line is broken and unravelling. In order to connect to ourpast we must take up that line in both hands and tie it to our present in order to guide us into the future. Our stories are a long worn line and the effort to maintain them has left an artifact of that care in the form of A Frayed Knot. - Cannupa Hanska Luger