Argent Kvasnikoff
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    • Qena Sint'isis & The Delzhi Alphabet
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    • Tuyanitun
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Welcome

My name is Argent and I am a Nichił artist originally from, living, and working in my homeland, currently a part of Alaska. Please see the about page or any of the works pages for more information.

Chiqinik / Thank You / Merci / Grazie / Obrigado / Danekschö​n

about

February 2025

2/25/2025

 

Series Update: Nivagi's Reliquary

My current ongoing project, a multimedia exhibit called Nivagi's Reliquary is still in production. It consists of a collection of written works that collectively form the story of society discovering artifacts that challenge their perception of the past, all while facing a monumental sea change themselves brought on by cosmological discoveries. This story contains allegories to the real-life culture and history of the Nichił nation and its people, and many of its elements are reinterpretations of true historical events. Alongside written and graphic design works, the series also features sculptural objects which echo the artifacts discovered, and act as a set of clues in a greater mystery that only viewers and readers will be able to immerse themselves in. Because this project is extremely ambitious, there is currently no fixed timeline towards its completion. However, I am eager to share the written works as they are finished. In 2024 I finished the final draft of The Parable of Nivagi, the centerpiece of the written works. The story is a novella which acts as a religious text for the people in the broader story who are beginning to reconstruct their version of history and vision for the future in the face of transformational upheaval. It is the epitome of the concepts of a story within a story. I am looking forward to sharing The Parable of Nivagi as a standalone work, and other short and fragmented written works, in the meantime as I continue working on Nivagi's Reliquary and other projects going forward.

Heritage Nichił Founded

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At the beginning of 2025 I launched Heritage Nichił, which is the new branding of my interpretive guide agency, cultural heritage advocacy, and cultural institution. Heritage Nichił is an independent body which connects both residents and visitors alike of the Southern Kenai Peninsula to meaningful cultural enrichment, education, and experiences through independent projects and materials, and by partnering with existing organizations and institutions that make up the regional network of educational enrichment. The primary reason I established this agency with its own identity is so I can actively demonstrate the need to separate the facets of my individual work, emphasizing that work I have completed as an individual working artist is not fully representational for a relatively less visible minority culture. It is also a way that I can incorporate the support from others in my community with a collective identity so that the people are credited for their own stories as a whole. Currently the agency will operate in the same way as I have worked independently in the past, by creating educational materials and partnering with local institutions, but now it will be on behalf of a distinct body that can be built upon by others.


Delzhi in 44 Letters on YouTube

Last year I began a video lecture series on YouTube called Delzhi in 44 Letters, which is a series that examines my work with the Dena'ina language, specifically our historical Kachemak dialect and the dynamics of challenges of a modern tribal society in maintaining the spirit and meaning of an extinct dialect through symbol, self-determinative processes, and the analysis of living dialects and neighboring languages and cultures. Each video in the series highlights one letter of my written system for our version of Dena'ina, Delzhi, which I originally unveiled as part of my Qena Sint'isis series in 2017, and any of the topics related to its design and inspiration. This is the first time I have worked with a video format on my own, and even though I have a long way to go in learning how to better stage and refine the video medium I am very happy with how I have structured the lectures and the variety of topics I have incorporated so far. As of February, I am just over halfway through the alphabet, and when it is complete I will continue to create more relating to other systems I work with, including mathematics, cartography, and chronology. These videos are best viewed in portrait mode.

August 2023

8/27/2023

 

Tuyanitun: Tuggeht Unveiled

Construction and installation on Tuyanitun: Tuggeht was finished in late 2022, and its formal celebration was held on June 21st, 2023. It was an immense occasion to see this accomplishment realized and to consecrate what is the largest sculptural work of mine so far in my career. It bears repeating that being able to have this concept fully developed from sketches to solid materials in a place of prominence in my birthplace was only possible because of the support of dozens of organizations, agencies, and individuals who chose to align their own time and work with this vision. Thank you again to everyone who played a role in this work. I am hoping to continue developing the Tuyanitun concept further in the future.

Delzhi Renewal

In the past three years I have spent time further refining the qena sint'isis alphabet and script. This has included simplifying letterforms, working on writing orientation, and creating conventions for transcriptions. I have also decided to rename the alphabet to Delzhi, which is a combination of the first and last letters of the alphabet. I decided to give it this name to make it easier to remember, and to separate its existence from the art series which it originally inspired. Among the considerations in its development, transliteration has been the most important aspect for me since the alphabet is intended to be a tool for living languages, and it has been interesting to think about how to express sounds from one language using a written system which is built around the sound dictionary of another which doesn't use that sound. The simplest example of this is our very useful common English article "the". Throughout the 8 years of this system's development and existence, I have been writing "the" in a variety of ways since "th" doesn't exist as a phoneme in root Nichił Dena'ina. If someone were to transcribe all of my Delzhi writings and art pieces they would see a vast history of changes and inconsistencies in how I write English or other languages. This has been the result of using a system for which no formal conventions exist; it isn't taught in an academic fashion, there are no set rules, and its communicability is incredibly limited to someone using a letter for letter guide. In the case of "the", I have decided that the aspirated t, written as t' in Latin, makes the most audible sense for the English word "the". So the transcription in Delzhi would be t'e, or the letters "tah" and "el". Other variants I had used in the past were de, te, and he. That is just one example of the many considerations in written form and style I have been pondering over, and thanks to work with wonderful fellow linguists, I see this system as starting to settle into its own maturation.

New Exhibit Series

Coming off of the completion of Tuyanitun: Tuggeht, I have been devoting the majority of my time over the past year to developing my next artwork series and exhibit structure. Although I do enjoy immersing myself in the challenges and opportunities presented by one-off, large scale works, I am always drawn back to the romanticized salon style environments that we associate with fine arts. However, I wanted to figure out how I can introduce some of the feelings of works like Tuyanitun: Tuggeht presents into this sphere. Using this as a backdrop and a challenge to myself, I am now developing a series which I believes can do just that. It is my hope that I will be able to reveal this in the near future.
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