The Invisible Dog (New York City) and BUoY Arts Center (Tokyo) are thrilled to welcome Cal Stalvig, artist in residency during NAFAS Festival.
This residency is part of NAFAS, an international festival exploring the relationship between art and food, with an exhibition of 60 artists and a series of performances, workshops and events. Discover the full program here
Cal Stalvig will contribute to NAFAS festival by bringing the ancient and sacred magic of candlelight. Fire has long been at the heart of human social, imaginative, and spiritual life, and candles extend the tradition of the hearth—the place where people gather, share food, tell stories, perform, and find warmth. Through their quiet presence, they transform the atmosphere and reconnect us with ancestral forms of gathering, inviting intimacy, reflection, and a shared sense of belonging.
Ancestor came to life in 2020 as the culmination of a study of human cadavers at the University of Minnesota. As a body of work, Ancestor has become both a portal to and a collaboration with the invisible realm of spirits and Others. Having traveled to the island nations of Iceland, Greece, and England, its presence has revealed varied and unexpected stories of migration and cultural exchange in each place. What stories will emerge in Japan?
Vacuum-sealed in a jumbo Ziploc bag and tucked among checked luggage, Ancestor carries handmade gifts from Turtle Island as gestures of goodwill for the people encountered along the journey: candles, canned pears and homemade jams from the garden, wild rice from northern lakes, walnut ink for calligraphy, dried herbs for tea, and herbal tinctures. Each is a microcosm of the greater entanglement we call home.
Made of terry cloth, felt, and down pillows, Ancestor is like a ghost, passing invisibly through X-ray machines while subverting passport control, immigration enforcement, and biometric surveillance. Their favorite pastime is spending long days in Airbnbs and being photographed in epic landscapes.
Cal Stalvig creates objects, spaces, and rituals that seek to restore fractured relationships between people and the more-than-human world, or what he refers to as the "Others."
Working amid ecological and societal collapse, his practice is rooted in witnessing, affection, reciprocity, and folk traditions, while remaining connected to the sacred cycles of life, death, renewal, and transmission. Candles are central to this body of work. Each begins with a harvested tree, which is hand-carved, molded, and cast in beeswax. Every candle replicates and archives an entanglement of histories, species, places, and relationships. Through both their making and their burning, the candles become focal points for stories of Indigeneity, otherness, reciprocity, and survival within endangered relationships. Throughout his work, an Ancestor arrives bearing gifts for the living and quietly observes the unfolding of each moment.
Cal Stalvig lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota (Mni Sota Makoce), on Turtle Island, near Gichi-gami (Lake Superior).
Location
BUoY Arts Center
49-11, Senju-Nakacho, Adachi-ku,
Tokyo
Program of workshop to be announced