Reboot 2018: Reconcile This

Work by Indigenous artists – whether displayed on billboards or in shows at leading galleries – helped launch much-needed conversations.

One notable development in the Canadian art world can be summed up in a single word: reconciliation.

There's probably no definitive way to quantify what seems to be continuing momentum in the number and range of Western Canadian shows by Indigenous artists.

Funding from Canada's 150th anniversary sparked some exhibitions and the Canada Council supported others, but galleries also seemed to be responding to a growing national dialogue about the country's troubled relationship with its First Peoples. 

An emerging generation of arts administrators, including more Indigenous curators, understands the importance of building relationships and encouraging conversations about social and political issues through contemporary art.

One ambitious effort that garnered attention last summer – a cross-country billboard project  featuring art by Indigenous women – was organized by Mentoring Artists for Women's Art, a Winnipeg non-profit group. Overseen by Mohawk curator and scholar Lee-Ann Martin, its theme of resilience took to heart the calls to action issued by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

 “It didn’t take me very long to say yes to this amazing project and to propose that we feature the art of 50 Indigenous women artists, given that women have largely been excluded and under-represented in the canon of Canadian art, until recently,” Martin said at the time.

One of the most prestigious shows in 2018 was Vancouver-based Anishinaabe artist Rebecca Belmore's Facing the Monumental at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Murray Whyte, writing in Galleries West about Belmore's pivotal work about women subjected to violence, The Named and the Unnamed, describes the artist "at her visceral finest – vulnerable, indignant and righteous, politically potent, but with a brimming, poetic humanity."

Another take on the theme of murdered and missing women, a travelling exhibition from Quebec curated by Sylvie Paré, was shown at the Urban Shaman artist-run centre in Winnipeg. Here, women's names are explicitly stated in the title – Missing or Forgotten: Akonessen, Zitya, Tina, Marie and all the others.

Other interesting shows included the Vancouver Art Gallery's Fringing the Cube by Dana Claxton, a Vancouver-based Hunkpapa Lakota artist; Body Language: Reawakening Cultural Tattooing of the Northwest, a group show at the Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art in Vancouver; and Li Salay, Michif for “the sun,” an exhibition at the Art Gallery of Alberta billed as the first major survey of Métis art at a large public institution.

Also notable was a show curated by the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina about Sarain Stump, an influential artist in Saskatchewan. Meanwhile, the Remai Modern in Saskatoon featured a touring show about an important American artist, Jimmie Durham, and the Winnipeg Art Gallery hosted SakKijâjuk: Art and Craft from Nunatsiavut, which looked at the visual culture of Labrador’s Inuit.

Many of this year's shows echoed positive themes of resilience, resurgence and empowerment.

One was the Indigenous Archival Photo Project, organized by Paul Seesequasis, a Plains Cree journalist and activist. It was sparked by his decision to celebrate resilience by posting positive images of Indigenous people from various museum archives on social media. 

It drew interest, sometimes from family members who had never seen the images before, but also in the larger community. A show featuring some of the photographs was held at the Touchstones Nelson Museum of Art and History in the British Columbia Interior, and a book is  in the works.

Another noteworthy development is how shared understandings about historical events have allowed Indigenous artists to undertake deeper explorations.

For instance, Lindsay Sharman, a curator at the Art Galley of Alberta, notes that Cree/Saulteaux/Métis artist Lori Blondeau moved beyond representations of trauma to create images of Indigenous women as strong, resilient and aspirational in her mid-career survey, Grace, at the College Art Galleries in Saskatoon.

"When you think about her most recent works, you can see an artist freed from the responsibilities of offering basic representations and truths," Sharman wrote in Galleries West. "Now that all of Blondeau’s audiences have a common baseline, she is able to go deeper in her work." ■