Mary Anne Barkhouse's Animal Empire

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Mary Anne Barkhouse’s exhibition, Le rêve aux loups (The Dream of Wolves) at the Esker Foundation in Calgary until Dec. 22, examines environmental concerns and Indigenous culture through the visual iconography of boreal forest animals, including beaver, owl, wolf and coyote. The exhibition, organized by guest curator Jennifer Rudder, is the largest survey of Barkhouse’s work to date, and follows an earlier version at the Koffler Gallery in Toronto. It brings together work from major museum collections, along with three new pieces that respond to the horrific legacy of Canada’s residential school system. Prominent in all the works is the clash between the natural world and the “civilized” European elite.

Barkhouse was born in 1961 in Vancouver and belongs to the Nimpkish band, Kwakiutl First Nation. Descended from a family of traditional Northwest Coast carvers that includes internationally recognized artists Ellen Neel, Mungo Martin and Charlie James, her practice incorporates exquisite sculptures of animals in wood, bronze, porcelain and glass that are juxtaposed against an elegant array of Baroque-style furniture and decor.

At the entrance is Empire, where a lynx, hare, frog and weasel lounge on luxurious velvet and silk cushions nestled amongst a careful arrangement of tree branches. With treaties in dispute and continued human expansion onto the land, as Rudder notes in her exhibition essay, this work, along with Barkhouse’s other sculptural installations, are eloquent reminders of the consequences of Canada’s colonial history and the need for respectful cohabitation.

Further in the gallery, ghostly photographs of wolves are hung on dark blue walls, paying homage to a different ancestral lineage. The titles Alpha I, Alpha II and Omega speak to the power hierarchies within wolf packs. Encased in embellished gold frames, like those that hold the portraits of aristocrats in European museums, these images pay tribute to the power and beauty of nature while evoking the darker side of humanity, including the use of opulent artifice to elevate one people over another. Amongst this haunting display is a series of smaller photographs taken during Barkhouse’s 2015 residency at the Canada Council’s Paris Studio and cast-glass goblets of hibernating bats perched on English dining tables built from Canadian trees.

The devastating effects of residential schools are tenderly yet painfully portrayed in a pair of sculptures in two small rooms adjacent to the portrait gallery. A white iron crib and a Victorian wicker pram contain, or perhaps imprison, delicately rendered porcelain baby birds of prey – owls, eagles and vultures – snuggled within soft fabric dressings. The vulnerability of these creatures as they huddle, exposed within these colonial artifacts, is both palpable and disconcerting.

This blanket of shame is splayed open in another piece at the back of the gallery, where a bronze beaver, a symbol of national pride, stands witness to a river of red fabric that holds pages from the executive summary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report.

Juxtaposing what Barkhouse describes as “the wild” with “the wildly opulent,” Le rêve aux loups offers an elegant and haunting testimony to the persistent power of animals and their ability to tell our stories. Her sophisticated works display a quiet, yet contentious, beauty that reflects on the ongoing struggle over territories and a history of colonial abuse that continues to strain relations between humans, animals and the environment.

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