Canada Council Art Bank: Madweyàshkà | Like a Wave

The revolution in Indigenous art continues

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A revolution in Indigenous art began in 1986 when the National Gallery of Canada purchased the mixed-media work, The North American Iceberg, by Indigenous artist Carl Beam, from the M’Chigeeng First Nation on Manitoulin Island. It was the first work with an Indigenous theme and created by a self-identified Indigenous artist to enter the collection.

Previously, Indigenous art was generally only acquired and exhibited by ethno-cultural museums, craft shops or souvenir stands. The purchase of Beam’s work by the National Gallery suddenly gave licence to Indigenous artists to create contemporary fine art similar to mainstream Canadian contemporary art but with an Indigenous twist.

The North American Iceberg dived into the past and present of Indigenous peoples with screen-printed photo image transfers and acrylic paint on Plexiglas. Beam’s collage-style work became a popular medium for other Indigenous artists to tell their stories.

“It all started with Carl Beam,” says the Saskatoon-based curator Olivia Kristoff of Cowessess First Nation. “All of the artists came afterward: ‘Hey, I don’t have to do work that looks like stereotypical Indian work. We can actually make contemporary work that resonates with us and just by being by an Indigenous artist, it is Indigenous.’”

Kristoff made the remarks during an interview at the opening of Madweyàshkà | Like a Wave. The exhibition is on now through May 2025 at Ajagemo, the Canada Council Art Bank's Ottawa gallery.

The year-long exhibition was curated by Kristoff, who selected two dozen works, many of them collages, from the Art Bank, which holds about 1,000 Indigenous works, about 5.8 per cent of the total collection.

The artworks are generally from what may be called the Elders of the contemporary Indigenous art world. There’s Beam, Jane Ash Poitras from Alberta, Edward Poitras from Saskatchewan, Rosalie Favell (originally from Manitoba,) as well as Ontario artists Shelley Niro, Jeff Thomas, Robert Houle and Barry Ace, Quebec’s Nadia Myre and the late Joane Cardinal-Schubert of Alberta. 

Iceberg is not in the exhibition but other Beam works are, including Burying the Ruler, 2005, a famous mixed-media piece protesting the eradication of the Taino people from the Dominican Republic.

The title of the exhibition borrows the Algonquin word Madweyàshkà, which roughly translates as Like A Wave. The life of Indigenous people, Kristoff suggests, is like a wave, with ups and downs, without end.

She almost called the show It Never Quits. That’s the title of a Cardinal-Schubert 1990 acrylic on paper in which photos of a very grim but determined man and woman emerge clearly from foggy turbulence. The lesson: “With persistence, we keep on going,” says Kristoff.

Many of the works are very familiar to those who frequent Indigenous exhibitions in Ottawa. It seems that national capital group exhibitions, for example, simply can not proceed without Rosalie Favell’s I woke to find my spirit had returned, (Plain(s) Warrior Artist), 1999, in which the artist portrays herself as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz awakening from a dream. Métis leader Louis Riel peeks through her bedroom window. The title of Favell’s work is a reference to Riel’s famous statement: “My people will sleep for 100 years, and when they awake it will be the artists who give them back their spirit.”

Another national capital favourite is For King and Country, 2015, by Ottawa artist Barry Ace, who is most celebrated as a beader but works in various media. In this work, the artist has placed a photograph of his father in military uniform. The senior Mr. Ace was among Canada’s troops landing at Juno Beach in France on D-Day. Text on the work states: “For King and Country – Denied the right to vote until 1960.” Ace’s work is particularly poignant this year, the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

A personal favourite in the Art Bank exhibition is Jane Ash Poitras’s Dancing Manitous, 1988, an acrylic-based collage of cartoon-like spirits dancing amid a series of texts in Indigenous syllabics. The work is very different from Ash Poitras’s more familiar collage work constructed from historical photographs.

Madweyàshkà | Like a Wave is a good introduction to the elders of the contemporary Indigenous art world. Perhaps we should call it an exhibition of the “influencers” and the “influenced.” They all tended to influence one another, says Kristoff.

While art-savvy Ottawa residents may find the show a little too familiar, the story is different for tourists coming to the capital and looking to discover some good art. And the art is good. No matter how many times you have experienced these works, seeing them is an opportunity to celebrate the amazing trajectory of the Indigenous art world from the day when Carl Beam entered the National Gallery in 1986 and began a revolution that continues today, with young Indigenous artists like Kablusiak, Caroline Monnet and Meryl McMaster topping the contemporary charts. ■

Madweyàshkà | Like a Wave is at Ajagemo, 150 Elgin St., Ottawa now through May 2025. Admission is free.

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Âjagemô at Canada Council for the Arts

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