JOSEPH TISIGA "The Magic Show," May 19 to June 10, 2011, The ODD Gallery, Dawson City

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"The White Shaman and his Stupefying Flying Red Chief"

Joseph Tisiga, "The White Shaman and his Stupefying Flying Red Chief," watercolour on paper, 2011, 22” X 30”.

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"Untitled"

Joseph Tisiga, "Untitled," watercolour on paper, 2011, 22” X 30”.

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"The White Shaman and his Stupefying Flying Red Chief"

Joseph Tisiga, "The White Shaman and his Stupefying Flying Red Chief," watercolour on paper, 2011, 22” X 30”.

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JOSEPH TISIGA

The Magic Show, May 19 to June 10, 2011, The ODD Gallery, Dawson City

BY: Nicole Bauberger

In an art world where anything is possible, the artist must create his own context. Joseph Tisiga imagines all of his artwork as the product of his fictional Indian Brand Corporation, also known as IBC. This spring, the Corporation will produce a show of watercolour and oil paintings exploring magic shows and persuasive illusions in Dawson City, Yukon.

Tisiga’s paintings are illustrative, narrative and dream-like. They often incorporate hand-written text and then watercolour washes using greys and browns, reminiscent of the fanciful work of Marcel Dzama. Tisiga adds Shary Boyle and Howie Tsui’s names to the list of young artists who work in this mode, creating narrative, illustrative, and psychologically driven paintings.

Tisiga signs his paintings J. Ciga, the traditional spelling of his last name. J. Ciga is a character, “the prop builder and janitor” for IBC, and a kind of avatar. Tisiga explains that the characters in IBC allow him to access different parts of himself. He sees Joseph Tisiga as a thinker who spends a lot of time reading and analyzing images, society and identity. The use of the J. Ciga persona frees the artist from the pressure to get all those thoughts into every piece. “This way I’m allowed to just make artifacts,” he says.

In The Magic Show, Tisiga will explore two other members of IBC: the Red Chief, and the White Shaman, in paintings that develop each of them as characters, and exploring their interdependence. In the watercolour The White Shaman and his Stupefying Flying Red Chief, the White Shaman saws into a box with ladies’ feet out both ends, while the Red Chief flies from visible lines above him, loose-limbed and puppet-like. Words are worked into the elaborately patterned red wallpaper: “Behold an incredible sight,” and totem poles sporting the words AMAZING and SUPERB flank the stage.

The Red Chief often wears a top hat with a feather in it, and the White Shaman has recognizably solid-looking hair from painting to painting, but they metamorphose. In one watercolour, the White Shaman stands in a 1960s-style living room. He suspends a glowing light bulb in midair, smoking a cigarette with the other hand. The Red Chief is represented by Tisiga’s mother as a child, sitting in that living room with her adoptive white family.

Magic and illusion fascinate Tisiga, including the illusion that corporations are willed into existence and given many of the rights of people. Tisiga shakes his head at this insane act of imagination, then borrows it and spoofs it. Many of the other realities of society, including the transactional illusion of the economy, seem to him similar magic tricks.

He’s come to see identity politics as a kind of trick as well. “It’s something we believe in,” he says. “We can’t really see the strings.” In previous paintings, Tisiga has appropriated cultural icons such as Curious George and Jughead to explore issues of colonialism. He walks very lightly over dangerous ground. His sense of play breathes an imaginative life into issues that often freeze into paralyzed seriousness.

Tisiga carries his ‘Indian license’ — he’s a member of the Kaska Dene First Nation — but he doesn’t identify specifically with his Kaska heritage as an artist. Based in Whitehorse, he feels he belongs to a global indigenous community.