Launch of the second gesture

Performances by Elisa Harkins, T s ēma Igharas, Hilda Nicholas

Works by Joi T. Arcand, Elisa Harkins & Nathan Young, T s ēma Igharas, Brian Jungen, Gabrielle L'Hirondelle Hill, Marianne Nicolson, Annie Pootoogook and Wendy Red Star

 

May 11, 2017

6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

 

Wood Land School: Kahatenhstánion tsi na’tetiatere ne Iotohrkó:wa tánon Iotohrha / Drawing Lines from January to December is conceived as a single year-long exhibition that unfolds through a series of gestures—clusters of activity that bring works into and out of the gallery space—such that the exhibition is in a constant state of becoming.

 

The first gesture was concerned with the power of line to mark history and invoke memory. In this first gesture, we have considered what it means to inherit a history. We have made claims for where we have felt ourselves formed. We have proposed that this is one potential way to pick up the line.

 

In the second gesture we ask: how does the line behave? Spanning video, photography, sculpture, drawing and performance, the works of the second gesture show us how to occupy the present. Here, the line acts as a point of departure for Indigenous relations, mapping time, family, Indigenous languages and non-human relations in the now. And yet, this isn't a singular line of thought. What does a line of thinking become when it is collapsed or disrupted? In this second gesture, we complicate and converse with the idea of the line and materiality.

 

Wood Land School: Kahatenhstánion tsi na’tetiatere ne Iotohrkó:wa tánon Iotohrha / Drawing Lines from January to December has yielded many questions and ideas—for Wood Land School, for SBC, for the artists and for our publics. Collectively, we consider how this line acts, thinks and articulates itself under this particular condition we have created or implicated ourselves in.

 

 

Joi T. Arcand is a photo-based artist from Muskeg Lake Cree Nation currently based in Ottawa, Ontario. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Saskatchewan in 2005. In 2006, along with Felicia Gay, she co-founded the Red Shift Gallery, a contemporary Indigenous art gallery in Saskatoon. In 2012, she founded kimiwan 'zine, a quarterly Indigenous arts publication. Arcand’s work has recently been exhibited at the Contemporary Native Art Biennial – Art Mur (Montreal), Kenderdine Art Gallery (Saskatoon), aka artist-run (Saskatoon), Access Gallery (Vancouver) and internationally in Seattle, London UK, and Belgium. She was recently nominated by Jeff Thomas for the Karsh-Masson exhibit Continuum, an exhibition of emerging photo-based artists and will also be curating an exhibition at Gallery 101 (Ottawa) opening in September 2017.

 

Elisa Harkins is a Native American (Cherokee/Muscogee) composer and artist originally hailing from Miami, Oklahoma. Harkins received her BA from Columbia College Chicago and her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. She has since continued her education at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her work deals with the concept of “Performing Life”, in which the performance intersects with her actual lived experience. Tackling subjects such as adoption, enrollment, and the 1990 Indian Arts and Crafts Act, Harkins uses electronic music, sculpture, and the body as her tools. She has exhibited her work at The Hammer Museum, The Broad Museum, Honor Fraser, MOCA North Miami, and the MCA Chicago. Harkins is an enrolled member of the Muscogee (Creek) tribe.   

 

Nathan Young (born 1975, Tahlequah, OK) is a multidisciplinary artist and composer working in an expanded practice that incorporates sound, video, documentary, animation, installation, socially engaged art and experimental and improvised music. Nathan’s work often engages the spiritual and the political and re-imagines indigenous sacred imagery in order to complicate and subvert perceived notions of the sublime. Nathan is a founding and former member for the artist collective Postcommodity (2007-2015) and holds an MFA in Music / Sound from Bard College’s Milton-Avery School of the Arts. 

 

Tsēma Igharas (formally Tamara Skubovius) is an interdisciplinary artist and member of the Tahltan First Nation. She studied Northwest Coast Formline Design at K’saan (2005/06), has a BFA from ECUAD (2011) and MFA from OCADu (2016). Tsēma has shown in notable group shows, Interweavings for emerging First Nations artists who have previously won a YVR Art Foundation scholarship (RAG 2014/15) and was recently selected for Culture Shift, Contemporary Indigenous Art Biennale in Montreal and Luminato festival in Toronto (2016). Tsēma graduated from the Interdisciplinary Master's in Art, Media and Design program at OCADu showing her thesis work, LAND|MINE that connects materials to mine sites and bodies to the land.

 

Brian Jungen (b. 1970, Fort St. John, British Columbia, Canada) lives and works in the North Okanagan, British Columbia. Solo exhibitions include Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver (2016); Kunstverein Hannover (2013); Bonner Kunstverein (2013); Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2011); Strange Comfort, National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC (2009); Museum Villa Stuck, Munich (2007); Tate Modern, London (2006); Vancouver Art Gallery (2006); Witte de With, Rotterdam (2006); New Museum, New York (2005). Modest Livelihood, a collaborative work with Duane Linklater, has been shown at the Edinburgh Art Festival (2014); the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2013); and the Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre, in collaboration with dOCUMENTA (13) (2012). Recent group exhibitions include On Space and Place: Contemporary Art from Chicago, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and Vancouver, De Paul Art Museum, Chicago (2016); Residue: Persistence of the Real, Vancouver Art Gallery (2015); Sakahàn, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2013); and Shanghai Biennial (2012).

 

Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill is a Cree-Metis artist and writer from Vancouver, BC, unceded Coast Salish territory. Gabrielle's sculptures and installations examine economic issues including underground economic practices and Indigenous economies. Her work has been exhibited at the TRU Gallery in Kamloops, BC; Gallery Gachet, grunt gallery, and Sunset Terrace in Vancouver; and at Get This! Gallery in Atlanta, GA. Most recently, Gabrielle's work was featured in the exhibitions To refuse/ To wait/ To sleep at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery in Vancouver, and like an old friend at Gallery 44 in Toronto.

 

Kanerahtenhá:wi Hilda Nicholas is Director of the Language and Cultural Center in her community of Kanehsatà:ke and President of the Mohawk Language Custodian Association, a non- profit organization for the preservation, revitalization and promotion of the Mohawk language. Her tenacity and spirit have kept these programs operating in a climate of poor funding and lack of understanding. Kanerahtenhá:wi, her journey of love and respect of the Kanien’kéha (Mohawk) language started in her grandmother’s kitchen. Her grandmother taught her how to read and write Mohawk as a child. She went on to pursue a teaching career. She has worked as Director of the Language and Culture and Curriculum Centre for many years. Under her guidance and tireless efforts, she organized the Language Day Plays for seven years, which included the participation of six Mohawk communities. She has also worked as a hostess and narrator and has translated many documentaries on language preservation struggles across Canada. These series were broadcast on the Aboriginal Television Network. As well as her efforts in the area of language preservation, she has extensive experience in administration and has sat on many committees and boards.

 

Marianne Nicolson (‘Tayagila’ogwa) is an artist of Scottish and Musgamakw Dzawada̱’enux̱w Nations descent. The Musgamakw Dzwada̱’enux̱w People are part of the Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw (Kwak’wala speaking nations) of the Pacific Northwest Coast.  Her training encompasses both traditional Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw forms and culture and Western European based art practice.  She has completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University of Art and Design (1996), a Masters in Fine Arts (1999), a Masters in Linguistics and Anthropology (2005) and a PhD in Linguistics and Anthroplogy (2013). She has exhibited her artwork locally, nationally and internationally as a painter, photographer and installation artist, has written and published a numerous essays and articles, and has participated in multiple speaking engagements. All of her practice engages with issues of Indigenous histories and politics arising from a passionate involvement in cultural revitalization and social justice. 

 

Annie Pootoogook (1969-2016) was an influential Inuk artist from Cape Dorset, Nunavut. The granddaughter of the renowned graphic artist Pitseolak Ashoona and the daughter of artists Napachie Pootoogook and Eegyvudluk Pootoogook, she is best known for her drawings depicting contemporary life in the Arctic. Pootoogook received the prestigious Sobey Art Award in 2006. Her work has been exhibited at the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto (2006); the Montréal Biennale and Art Basel (2007); documenta 12, Kassel, Germany (2007); the National Museum of the American Indian, New York (2009); the Biennale of Sydney (2010) and the survey exhibition Oh, Canada (2014).

 

Artist Wendy Red Star works across disciplines to explore the intersections of Native American ideologies and colonialist structures, both historically and in contemporary society. Raised on the Apsáalooke (Crow) reservation in Montana, Red Star’s work is informed both by her cultural heritage and her engagement with many forms of creative expression, including photography, sculpture, video, fiber arts, and performance. An avid researcher of archives and historical narratives, Red Star seeks to incorporate and recast her research, offering new and unexpected perspectives in work that is at once inquisitive, witty and unsettling. Intergenerational collaborative work is integral to her practice, along with creating a forum for the expression of Native women’s voices in contemporary art.

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Red Star has exhibited in the United States and abroad at venues including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fondation Cartier pour l’ Art Contemporain, Domaine de Kerguéhennec, Portland Art Museum, Hood Art Museum, St. Louis Art Museum, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art, among others. She served a visiting lecturer at institutions including Yale University, the Figge Art Museum, the Banff Centre, National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Dartmouth College, CalArts, Flagler College, Fairhaven College, and I.D.E.A. Space in Colorado Springs. In 2015, Red Star was awarded an Emerging Artist Grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation. In 2016, she participated in Contemporary Native Photographers and the Edward Curtis Legacy at the Portland Art Museum, and recently mounted a solo exhibition as part of the museum’s APEX series. Red Star holds a BFA from Montana State University, Bozeman, and an MFA in sculpture from University of California, Los Angeles. She lives and works in Portland, OR.