The Power of Healing

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Candice Lin, “Minoritarian Medicine,” 2020

wood cabinet with ceramics, glass jars, herbal tinctures and glazed ceramic plates (courtesy of the artist and François Ghebaly, Los Angeles; photo by Blaine Campbell)

Good medicine, bad medicine – the phrase has many meanings and inferences, metaphoric or actual. The group exhibition, An apology, a pill, a ritual, a resistance, at the Remai Modern in Saskatoon until May 24, interprets this concept through a potpourri of works by 23 artists who use many modes and materials. 

A close look at one of the smaller pieces – a medicine cabinet titled Minoritarian Medicine by Los Angeles artist Candice Lin – reveals something of the tone and scope of the whole show. Her installation includes healing tinctures from Chinese medicine and four ceramic plates featuring turbulent images with supernatural figures.

The piece expands beyond its seeming simplicity, evoking meanings that touch on natural and discredited curatives, as well as fear and racism. The work, done in 2020, is particularly relevant given the sharp increase in anti-Asian discrimination during the pandemic.

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Brian Jungen, “Plague Mask,” 2020

Nike Air Jordans, 13” x 27” x 16” (Claridge Collection, courtesy Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver) and Clara Hume, 26 paintings from the portfolio “Saskatchewan Flowers from Spring to Fall,” 1974, acrylic on card, 14” x 11” (Mendel Art Gallery Collection at Remai Modern; photo by Blaine Campbell)

Also seminal are 50 acrylic paintings of native flowers by Saskatchewan artist Clara Hume. Many of the plants, depicted with resonant beauty on black backgrounds, have medicinal properties. While the images are vivid, the plants' evocative names – like the lilac-flowered beardtongue – touch on the poetic.

The series appears in two groupings – 24 pieces are on the Remai’s ground floor, while 26 more are on the third floor, thereby linking the exhibition’s two spaces and its themes, which include the HIV/AIDS crisis, pharmacology, gender representation, physiology and resistance.

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Adrian Stimson, “Iini Sookumapii: Guess who’s coming to dinner?,” 2019

mixed media installation (collection of Remai Modern; photo by Blaine Campbell)

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Adrian Stimson, “Iini Sookumapii: Guess who’s coming to dinner?” (detail), 2019

Adrian Stimson, “Iini Sookumapii: Guess who’s coming to dinner?” (detail), 2019mixed media installation (collection of Remai Modern; photo by Blaine Campbell)

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Another piece that stands out is Adrian Stimson’s mixed-media installation Iini Sookumapii: Guess who’s coming to dinner? It features portrait photographs, a set table, a painting and large standing figures made from steel. 

Stimson has a startlingly direct familial connection to the residential school stain, the basis of this piece. His father was rounded up as a child and appears, unidentified, as one of 68 portrait photographs of teenaged boys from the Siksika reserve at the Old Sun residential school near Gleichen, in southern Alberta. The school was named after Stimson’s great-grandfather, Natos-api, or Old Sun.

Central to Stimson’s installation is a table that recalls a gathering of Siksika Nation members to consider a proposal for an apology by Toronto artist AA Bronson (of General Idea) for his great-grandfather, J.W. Tims, the first Anglican missionary on the reserve. 

While the setting is elegant, with gold-trimmed plates, shiny silverware and a small bronze buffalo on each plate, darker realities are echoed in the plank benches and nearby painting of children in a residential school dining room. The installation represents the “disease” of colonization. An apology is just one step toward healing. 

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Linda Young, “kôhkominawak (Our Grandmothers),” 2008

mixed media (courtesy of the artist; photo by Blaine Campbell)

Further context is provided by Linda Young, an artist and traditional knowledge keeper in Saskatchewan, whose installation, kôhkominawak (Our Grandmothers) is composed of seven figures sitting in a circle, hunched forward in solidarity and, perhaps, in prayer. Shawls and kerchiefs were provided by 10 collaborators, among them Buffy Sainte-Marie. 

A nearby wall features the late Cree painter Allen Sapp’s portrait of his grandmother while a wall-sized screen shows Mississippi Choctaw-Cherokee artist Jeffrey Gibson’s She Never Dances Alone, a digitally animated video that honours missing and murdered Indigenous women. It features traditional jingle dancer Sarah Ortegon, accompanied by the vibrant voices and thundering drumming of A Tribe Called Red. The video's colourful imagery explodes into kaleidoscopic, psychedelic abstractions. With due concern and respect, the piece’s exuberance expresses joy and, dare I say, power. ■  

An apology, a pill, a ritual, a resistance at the Remai Modern in Saskatoon from March 13 to May 24, 2021. Artists include Ruth Cuthand, Wally Dion, Guo Fengyi, Sharona Franklin, General Idea, Jeffrey Gibson, Carsten Höller, Clara Hume, Brian Jungen, Kapwani Kiwanga, Kite, Carolyn Lazard, Candice Lin, Les Levine, Paul Maheke, Dylan Miner, Jane Ash Poitras, Skeena Reece, Allen Sapp, P. Staff, Adrian Stimson, Alberta Whittle and Linda Young.

Correction 31/3/21, 10:32 a.m. This post has been updated to reflect the correct date of Candice Lin's work, Minoritarian Medicine. The date was initially identified as 2019, but the work was actually made in 2020.

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