Gallery Day
Went to Art Mûr this afternoon, braving the snowstorm to go see art! It was a beautiful exposition of contemporary aboriginal art called Baliser le territoire : Manifestation d’art contemporain autochtone. Featuring Sonny Assu, Jason Baerg, Carl Beam, Rebecca Belmore, Kevin Lee Burton, Hannah Claus, Bonnie Devine, Raymond Dupuis, Edgar Heap of Birds, Vanessa Dion Fletcher, Nicholas Galanin, Greg Hill, Robert Houle, Maria Hupfield, Rita Letendre, Glenna Matoush, Alan Michelson, Nadia Myre, Marianne Nicolson, Michael Patten, Arthur Renwick, Sonia Robertson, Greg Staats, Tania Willard, and Will Wilson.
It was a super powerful exhibit. I especially loved these pieces:
Arthur Renwick
I loved this one, talking about how when the Native people signed the treaties, most of them couldn't really read, and didn't know what they were signing. On the top of these pieces were punctuation marks, cut out of metal, juxtaposed with photographs of land that had been lost the the Native people.
Nicholas Galanin
Rebecca Belmore
This one was incredible. On the back of the hoodie it has a cross made out of words. Up and down it says FUCKI N ARTIST, and across the sleeves it say FUCKI N INDIAN.
Another one of my favorite pieces was the film by Alan Michelson, called Shattemuc, an excerpt of which can be found: http://alanmichelson.com/work/ . It had such a morose feeling, just filming the passing down a river in the dark. Showing the industrial development beside the wild earth, a river that had always been so important to the artist's people. It was beautiful.
Definitely worth going to check out this exhibit.