#Art Writing

[huariqueje]

Excursion to philisophy , Hopper's house - Ángel Mateo Charris , 1996.

Spanish, b.1962 -

Oil on canvas, 195 x 130 cm.

[theseuschats]

You guys really liked the last one so here's more.

set in the same AU, i guess?? Do yall want there to be a storyline here? Idkkkk

[altrbody]

Abstraction:

"Abstraction is flying. Abstracting is ascending to higher and higher levels of conceptual generalization; soaring back and forth, reflectively circling around above the specificity and immediacy of things and events in space and time, from a perspective that embeds them in a conceptual framework of increasing breadth and depth, a framework without horizon, ceil-ing, or basement; a framework composed of increasingly comprehensive concepts that generalize over increasingly comprehensive classes of things, organize them relative to one another, unify them into a coherent tapestry, a dizzying object of contemplation the details of which stun one into panic by their connectedness, significance, and vividness.

Abstraction is also flight. It is freedom from the immediate spatiotemporal constraints of the moment; freedom to plan the future, recall the past, comprehend the present from a reflective perspective that incorporates all three; freedom from the immediate boundaries of concrete subjectivity, freedom to imagine the possible and transport oneself into it; freedom to survey the real as a resource for embodying the possible; freedom to detach the realized object from oneself more and more fully as a self-contained entity, fully determined by its contextual properties and relations, and consider it from afar, as new grist for the mill of the possible. Abstraction is freedom from the socially prescribed and consensually accepted; freedom to violate in imagination the constraints of public practice, to play with conventions, or to indulge them. Abstraction is a solitary journey through the conceptual uni-verse, with no anchors, no cues, no signposts, no maps, no foundations to cling to. Abstraction makes one love material objects all the more."

--Adrian Piper

From Adrian Piper: Reflections 1967-1987, Alternative Museum, New York City April 18-May 30, 1987.

[piizunn]

We Will Always Remember (Where We Met), 2024

House paint on un-stretched canvas

On display at AceArtInc in Winnipeg, Manitoba from September 6th to October 18th, 2034 as part of a group exhibition titled ‘Room To Grow Tall’ curated by Sanaa Humayun and Kiona Callihoo Ligtvoet of Making Space, a BIPOC focused peer mentorship for visual artists.

We Will Always Remember (Where We Met) 2024 is an installation in the form of a map leading from AceArt Inc. to the Forks National Historic Site. The piece utilizes modern materials like latex house paint with traditional canvas, exploring themes of contemporary Métis homes, our trappers tents, and the ways in which Métis access knowledge, and housing, community, and our traditional spaces.

The map invites the viewer to walk from the gallery to The Forks as they consider the past and present uses of this land, and the relationship between the Métis and this sacred confluence. The work is a continuation of a piece created in 2024 for The New Gallery in Mohkinstsis titled let’s meet at the confluence which took the form of a public billboard in the downtown area.

At the core of my practice are concepts defined in the works of Gerald Vizenor, Sara Ahmed, and Chantal Fiola whose writings discuss notions of survivance, queer phenomenology, traditional Métis teachings, and appreciation for the lands that hold us.

The following is an accompanying text I wrote the morning of the workshop programming I planned for this exhibition.

Saturday, September 7th, 2024

12:01 PM

I’m staying with my friends B. and C. in their beautiful apartment in Winnipeg. They’re such sweethearts and I’m so grateful I can crash with them. I took the morning to myself after karaoke last night. I was sleepy and a little dehydrated so I stayed back to make my plan for the day.

I felt the sound of drums, I opened a window but the sound was coming from inside the building somewhere. I found the place where the drums were the loudest and standing in the dining room with my hand over my heart and a rowdy kitten named Mabel at my feet, I listened to the drummer as their voice joined the beat and felt the vibrations through my feet like the roots of a tree.

I texted my dad happy birthday, I had leftover root beer and french fries for breakfast, I let Mabel walk on my notebook as I write, and I’ll let myself move slowly today.

[in-the-heart-of-the-vampire]

When I have free time to be creative: nada , zip, ziltch, nothing.

When I’m trying to focus at work: here is a depressing poem of the Dark Urge morning the lost opportunity of being close with their sister,Orin,had they been born to a different world.

[ardent-reflections]

We do not escape into philosophy, psychology, and art-- we go there to restore our shattered selves into whole ones.

Anais Nin

[whoismims]

The Art of Accumulation in an Age of Decluttering

My mother came of age under British colonial rule in Hong Kong, treated as a second-class citizen and unable to return to her parents’ ancestral home in Hunan province. In the US, she roamed antique malls and flea markets in search of relics, specifically those from China that had somehow made their way overseas and were being peddled by dealers who, back in the 1990s, didn’t know their true value. Instead of magazine subscriptions, we received catalogues in the mail from Christie’s and Sotheby’s, which my mother would study in order to teach herself how to differentiate between what was authentic and what was fake. All I knew as a child was that we had a lot of old things. I didn’t understand their significance to my mother until I fully grappled with my own sense of identity. Through collecting, she keeps alive the dream of cultural belonging, the antiques serving as both connection to and substitute for the melancholic fantasy of a motherland.

From the essay I was most proud of publishing this year about hoarding, art, my immigrant mother, and Marie Kondo.

Image: Song Dong, Waste Not: Song Dong, 2006 (installation view), at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

[groovyfloorshow]

"Have you ever wondered about what lives in the bushes? What hides in the clouds above? What flies with the wind, when you're looking away? Have you ever felt there are things or rather creatures that live with us but stay hidden to the foolish human eye? Have you been seeking truth? Fell forget about that. Don't seek things you don't want to know. Don't ask stupid questions.

But after all this still won't let you rest? You keep annoying me and asking me for answers! Then, you shall have your answers but the consequences, that you surely will face, are your own fault."

I'm working on a fantasy handbook, that introduces creatures, hiding in our realm and perhaps beyond. It's something I've been wanting to do since I was a little and I really enjoy chatacter design and making up lore.

This little lady is a common type of garden fairy called birdling! I thought I'd start with something, rather friendly. Although these little creatures enjoy playing tricks on humans, they are good at heart and as long as you don't bother them, they won't bother you. At least not much... They usually resemble all kinds of birds, although they are much more fashionable. You might have seen one but didn't even notice it. They usually live in little nests located in bushes.that have tunnels to underground where they build their own cities and kingdoms, although you can hardly call them this. It's mostly just holes with all sorts of rubbish in them. They steal frequently and are very fond of it. Looking through a birdlings home, you might find that sock you've lost 3 years ago, used as a bed or that little doll, you loved so much as a child, now serving as a table. As far as I know, they are unable to communicate with humans. Well maybe they just don't want to talk to me.

Pls forgive me for my English I'm still learning

[elinormakara]

Creative Thoughts: Where I'm at

Lately I've been experimenting with my digital art tablet instead of drawing/painting traditionally. Can't deny, using the tablet has been fun - at the start I was drawing traditionally then transferring my art onto the art software, Krita. Recently, over the past week, I've been drawing directly onto the tablet which in some sense has come naturally but in other ways the diverse range of pens and paintbrushes to use for mark making is a little daunting, at first lol.

I don't want to abandon my traditional art but for future projects - such as comics and Youtube content - I've had to think of how to best present the artwork. I think digital art is better for this for many reasons, mostly because it's hard to transfer a traditional piece onto a digital space and retain all of it's quality that's seen in real life - I'm talking brush strokes, mark making that make traditional art a pleasure to see in person - unless I have a brillant camera to capture this - which I don't lol.

Going forward I feel the need to practice more with my tablet - learn how to color better and develop a style I'm happy with. So far I've been playing around with the chibi art style which I find easier for experimenting and designing but I'd like to eventually try out a more adult style, think Heaven Official's Blessing art style - this is the direction for my character's Elinor and Roi (you guys haven't seen Roi yet, don't worry he'll be around soon, once I get a good idea for Elinor's design first). I have big ideas for these two - they'll be on Youtube.

Whereas RumpleSloth, Poto, Perla will retain their cute look. I have big ideas for RumpleSloth. :)

If you've made it this far and would also like an update on the Ryomen Sukuna fanfic: Rebirth that I'm writing, the Christmas chapter rework is well under way - I'm adding more depth to the writing - it will no longer be in script form but instead will match up to the style of writing that follows on from that chapter. Yes, I still very much love Sukuna. :)

Thank you for reading my creative thoughts! I hope to make lots of content for people to enjoy. :) Don't worry though I will still create art traditionally, it is my roots and the medium that helped me become an artist.

[agentfascinateur]

The Art World in support of Palestinians:

(which got Artforum's editor fired)

[writerighthere]

I NEED YOUR HELP!! PLEASE

As a new hobby, I’ve decided to teach myself about digital art… AND IT IS NOT AS EASY AS IT LOOKS.

I’ve been playing around with my poems, creating different size pictures, social media posts, etc. using different fonts… it’s a challenge finding a font and font color to use in the poem that will show up in front of a background… there may be a rule or formula for that… please let me know if there is.

If you have any experience creating digital art, please glance over a couple of my posts and let me know if there’s anything I could have done differently (or if you think I did okay) 😃.

I welcome good and not so good critiques.

Thank you!!!

[sexypinkon]

Sexypink - Enter the world of Rex Dixon.

[theseuschats]

and the reason is this

[altrbody]

Arian Piper, Portrait, 1983. Photo-text collage, 24 x 36 inches.

PORTRAIT All sentient species are biologically programmed to attack alien enemies, Some species are programmed to attack their own members as alien enemies. Rats, for example, will attack, kill or even cannibalize one another under conditions of overcrowding and deprivation. But human beings are more unique still. Only human beings are capable of self-destruction, of suicide, of acts that have our own self-obliteration as a conscious purpose.

Human beings must view themselves as alien enemies to be able to do this. They must believe that if they allow this alien enemy to exist, it will destroy them. And so to avoid destroying themselves they destroy themselves.

We can see why this might be so. We do not know ourselves very well. Often we feel assaulted by unacceptable thoughts and impulses, and move to suppress them; or shamed by unacceptable physical features, and work to remove them; or threatened by others' unacceptable behavior or appearance, and so attack or reject them. We view these things as alien enemies, not as the familiar ingrained parts of ourselves they are. And so we are constantly moved to destroy and reconstitute ourselves in conformity with our truncated and distorted self-image.

In all these cases, and others like them, we fail to recognize that we are destroying ourselves. And so our centrally motivating urge to self-destruction itself goes unrecognized. Perhaps we wouldn't recognize this particular facet of ourselves if it stared us in the face.

[piizunn]

fur, money, adventure: mechanisms of colonialism and survivance

riel ✰ | march, 2023

“Of all the things on earth, the motherland is the most important  

and sacred to us because we inherited it from our ancestors,”  

- Louis Riel 

Fig. 1, Wilson. I. Former Jean Caron Sr. House, Batoche Saskatchewan. Image courtesy of I. Wilson and Parks Canada

I am Red River Métis, descending maternally from historic Métis families by the names of Berthelet, Caron, Ste. Germain, Larivière, Dazè, Dubois, and Boudreau; we come from the Red River Settlement in Manitoba and Batoche, Saskatchewan. My Berthelet family members were employees of the North-West Company and community leaders in the town of Pointe à Grouette, now Ste. Agathe (St. Onge). My fifth great uncle Jean Caron Sr. fought in the Battle of Duck Lake of the North-West Resistance of 1885, with his sons and under the command of Gabriel Dumont, Jean Caron Sr’s house still stands in Batoche to this day (fig. 1). I introduce myself in this way, the traditional way of the Métis to situate myself on this land and contextualise my knowledge and experiences. 

My practice serves to counter the settler-colonial understanding of Métis people and our history and establish us as a people who have been practising survivance for generations. With the help of aesthetics of survivance I oppose mechanisms of colonialism; aesthetics including the Hudson’s Bay Company’s bloody legacy, the monuments and public art installed throughout Calgary, the suburban cowboys that come out of hiding in their McMansions on the outskirts of the city, riding their steel steeds, raised trucks, to the summer Stampede. The aesthetics of survivance are “[...]more than survival, more than endurance, or mere response, [...] stories of survivance are the creases of sovereignty,” (Vizenor, 15). In her 2019 book The North-West is Our Mother by Jean Teillet, the author compares the birth of the Métis Nation to human birth; messy, bloody, painful. Our history is vastly complex and controversial in the eyes of the average Canadian settler today. It is a history that makes settlers uncomfortable, confused, sometimes defensive and angry in response to lack of knowledge and this ignorance is often no fault of their own. Canada has a carefully curated canon of history that we are all spoon-fed in school until given the chance to learn the other sides of this history, to think critically and hear stories of survivance. 

Fig. 2, The Bay “Shopping is Good” advertisement, 2000. Courtesy of the HBC History Foundation

Countering aesthetics of survivance, The Hudson’s Company has developed their own aesthetics of colonialism. “Fur! Money! Adventure! That [is] what the Hudson’s Bay Company territory had to offer Englishmen and Canadians three hundred years ago,” (Sealy, 1). From the very beginning of the point blanket, with its iconic stripes on white wool, traded for a single beaver pelt to an advertisement from the year 2000 (fig. 2). An image of a nuclear family wearing matching white outfits in a clean white room. Everything accented with green, red, yellow, and indigo stripes, down to the scarf that the grandmother is knitting, referencing the histories of trade and handmade goods long abandoned by the HBC in favour of their modern department store model and multiple aesthetic rebrands throughout the years after the industrial revolution (Toneguzzi). The advertisement simply states, “Shopping is Good, Toronto”. Pro pelle cuttem, a pelt for a skin, a skin for a skin.

Fig. 3, Starr, Riel. Image of the original HBC logo, downtown Calgary. Image courtesy of the artist.

The HBC shield on a building in downtown Calgary (fig. 3) is a grim reminder of the bloody birth of this country, laughing in my face. As Billy Ray Belcourt puts it: “Canada is still in the business of gunning down NDNs. […] Despite the stories of progress and equality at the core of Canada’s national identity, a long tradition of brutality and negligence is what constitutes kinship for the nation of citizens sat atop the lands of older, more storied ones. […] What I can do is love as though it will rupture the singularity of Canadian cruelty.” (Belcourt, 5)  

Fig. 4, 5, Starr, Riel. Otipemisiwak Fantasy Husband, 2022. Courtesy of the artist.

A Spectacle of Me for You: Otipemisiwak Fantasy (2022-present) is an ongoing body of work that explores the Métis identity through a modern and Indigiqueer lens, and through humour and the NDN belly laugh (Whitehead). The work consists of a series of photographs of myself wearing a costume I created using a combination of found and handmade garments. In the photographs from 2022 titled Otipemisiwak Fantasy Husband, (figs. 4 and 5) which have been printed in the form of stickers and two different postcard designs, the character Otipemisiwak Fantasy Husband (OFH), the masked trickster, poses with wood leftover from building a Red River cart in 2022. The aesthetics of survivance often incorporate embodying the skewed image that settlers have of the savage Indian, over exaggerating it so that that the joke remains in our own hands, and we can laugh at the ignorant moniyaw. In these photographs OFH is wearing a red and black lumberjack flannel over a red shirt with a black graphic of Louis Riel’s Face and white text that reads “Keeping’ it Riel,”. Around his waist is a ceinture fléchée, and a beaded leather strap on harness worn over brown dress pants. On his head is a latex mask of Louis Riel, his skin is placid and his features cartoonish, in the style of the masks of American presidents used in the 1991 film Point Break (directed by Katherine Bigelow) (fig. 6).

Fig. 6, Patrick Swayze, James Le Gros, Bojesse Christopher, and John Philbin in Point Break (1991), dir. Katheryn Bigelow. Image courtesy of Twentieth-Century Fox. 

This work explores the aestheticization of colonialism through these political figures and latex masks which can be attributed to the abstraction of the real person from their caricature in history and in the cultural zeitgeist. One postcard design contains a full body shot of the character in a comically dominant pose with a log positioned suggestively between his legs, standing in for the strap on harness’s missing toy. The second design is a close-up shot of the character’s pelvis, the strap on harness visible with his thumbs hooked casually on the straps.  

Referencing other Indigenous artistic personas such as Adrian Stimson’s “Buffalo Boy” and Lori Blondeau’s “Belle Sauvage” (fig. 7), my artwork including OFH satirises the settler-colonial understandings of Louis Riel as a violent traitor to the government by pointing to the ways his story has grown into a mythology of sorts in the eyes of Canadians in a similar manner to other related figures like the former presidents represented in Point Break.

Fig. 7, Stimson, Adrian; Blondeau, Lori. Belle and Boy’s Savage Buffalo Happy Hour. Image courtesy of Adrian Stimson and Lori Blondeau.

Like Stimson’s Buffalo Boy, my character represents an exaggerated Métis identity in order to “[…] camp up colonialism, sexuality, and authenticity,”  embodying the trickster archetype like Buffalo Boy in the words of Stimson, “he’s campy, ridiculous, and absurd, but he is also a storyteller, who exposes cultural and societal truths,” (Rice, Taunton, Stimson). OFH mimics the over-sexualized settler-colonial perception of Indigenous masculinity, sexuality,  and queerness and is an exploration of the ways in which my identity is tokenized: sexually, spiritually, academically, and culturally. 

A Spectacle of Me for You: Otipemisiwak Fantasy is a way of participating in the phenomenon within contemporary Métis art of Louis Riel related kitsch objects that flood markets across the Métis homeland. Alongside and juxtaposing red and white Canadian kitsch that litters tourists' traps and contemporary art galleries across this land, appears the stoic face Louis Riel, gazing out at the country that has developed since his murder in 1885. As Marilyn Dumont puts it: “Riel is dead, but he just keeps coming back,” (70) Contemporary artists like Jessie Ray Short embody Louis Riel by taking on his likeness as a costume. The short film Wake up! (2015) (fig. 8) is a queering of this popular trend.

Fig. 8, Short, Jessie Ray, still from Wake Up!, 2015, video with sound, 5:58 min. Courtesy of the Artist, via Mount Pleasant Community Art Screen

The artist, transforms herself into Louis Riel by applying facial hair, a wig, and clothing to mimic the most famous portrait of Riel in a drag-esque performance. The work asks, “How do you explain a culture in small talk?” and is an example of the “re-examining the cultural significance of Louis Riel [that] allows us to consider the ways in which we can question representation while still respecting the importance this history holds.” (Junker) 

Fig. 9 (left), Danger, Dayna. Digital print of Adrienne Dagger, wearing one of Dayna Danger's fetish mask. Image courtesy of the artist and CBC news.

Fig. 10 (right), Danger, Dayna. Big’Uns: Adrienne, 2017. Courtesy of the artist’s website. 

The beaded strap-on worn over the pants and the explicit nature of the posing is in reference to Dayna Danger’s Big’Uns (2017) (fig. 10) series, as well as their series of beaded fetish masks for their emphasis on material and process (fig. 9). The result is what Danger refers to as “the most Native BDSM thing ever,” to wrap yourself in beads. Like Danger’s beaded mask project, the Otipemisiwak Fantasy Husband persona came about partly out of a joke, the desire to make something humorous and sexy. Being queered by my Indigeneity, my sexuality, and gender, I consider Sara Ahmed’s words from the introduction of her book Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others,

 “A queer phenomenology, perhaps, might start by redirecting our attention toward different objects, those that are “less proximate” or even those that deviate or are deviant. And yet, I would not say that a queer phenomenology would simply be a matter of generating queer objects,” 

The emphasis on the strap-on harness points to a specific queer object with cultural associations within the concept of queer phenomenology and orientations. It functions not only as a deviant object or a queer object but also an Indigiqueer “orientation device,” (Ahmed, 3). 

Fig. 11, Starr, Riel. Spread from Reading Marilyn Dumont to A Railway Berm, 2023. Image courtesy of the artist.

The most recent work in A Spectacle of Me for You: Otipemisiwak Fantasy is a performance titled Reading Marilyn Dumont to A Railway Berm (2023) in which OFH, sporting a new fringed leather jacket and matching tan suede Manitobah Mukluks reads poetry by Métis poet, author, and academic Marilyn Dumont to the dismantled railway that once entered the former Fort Calgary. The title of the poem is A Letter to John A. MacDonald and the author directly addresses the first prime minister and informs him of his failed railroad project. In addition to the Louis Riel mask, I had also begun the process of making a mask in the image of John A. MacDonald but had not found a use for it until reading the poem by Dumont. The performance is documented in the form of a hand-bound zine using imitation sinew, with photo documentation of the performance of reading to the railroad and John A. as well as the action of “scalping” the John A. mask to remove it from the base. This is contrasted with documentation of the site using both historical and modern images taken during the performance and sourced from the museum of Fort Calgary’s website (fig. 11).   

Fig. 12, Starr, Riel. Prairie Vessel, 2022. Image courtesy of the artist.

Prairie Vessel (2022) (fig. 12) is an exploration of Métis aesthetics of survivance, specifically the Red River Cart and its material and physical qualities, as well as its history and symbolism in our culture. The Red River Cart is represented in the contemporary Métis Nation of Alberta and Manitoba Métis Federation logos, the cart being revered as an important symbol of survivance to our people. Historically the carts were built without the use of standardised measurement or plans, however there were two defining design features common to all Red River carts; their two wheels and lack of any metal joinery, only using wood and rawhide in their construction. The research for this piece included scouring online databases like the Louis Riel Institute and the Gabriel Dumont Institute in order to find any sort of construction plans for the carts. George Fayant is one of the few Métis makers with this skill, and has been building them for over two decades, since 1998 (Patterson). Prairie Vessel (2022) is a study of Métis material culture out of the need to preserve a lesser-known art form, and to practise survivance both personally and for my people so that I may keep knowledge and ways of making beyond alive, to keep them thriving in the spirits of my ancestors and all living Métis. 

I am just one Halfbreed, but I am still Halfbreed. My ancestors' spiritual and genetic material makes up my personhood and part of that personhood is in all Métis. I do not yet know who I am to my people, but I carry an important name and an old spirit. I would like to be a trickster, “lotta raven in that one,” they’ll say (Maracle, 19). I would like to be like old James Bird Jr., trickster, trader, smart as a whip, a deadly sense of humour, and mean to missionaries. Wiisakayachack, Nanabush, Bluejay, Raven, Coyote, Li P’tchi Mond, Chi Jean, James Bird Jr., I long to be a chakapish.

Works Cited  

Ahmed, Sara. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Duke University Press, 2006.

Barkwell, Lawrence. Métis Mythology and Folklore: Mythological figures. Métis Museum, Louis Riel Institute.  

Belcourt, Billy-Ray, et al. A History of My Brief Body. Two Dollar Radio, 2020.   

Bigelow, Katheryn. Point Break. Twentieth Century Fox, 1991.  

Danger, Dayna. “The most Native BDSM thing ever”: Dayna Danger’s Fetish Masks Challenge Indigenous Sexuality Taboos. CBC Radio, 2018. 

Danger, Dayna. Big’Uns: Adrienne. The Resilience Project, 2017.

Dumont, Marilyn. A Really Good Brown Girl. Brick Books, 1996. 

The Hudson’s Bay Company History Foundation. The Bay, “Shopping is Good” advertisement, 2000. 

Junker, Jocelyn. Capture Photo Festival: Jessie Ray Short’s Wake Up! (2015), 2022. 

Maracle, Lee. A Really Good Brown Girl: Introduction. Brick Books, 2019. 

Patterson, Dayne. Red River cart unveiled at U of S celebrates Métis presence on campus. CBC News, 2022. 

Rice, Ryan, and Carla Taunton. “Buffalo Boy: Then and Now.” Fuse Magazine, vol. 32, no. 2, 2009, pp. 18–25. 

Sealey, D. Bruce. Stories of the Métis /. Manitoba Metis Federation Press, pg. 1, 1973.  

Short, Jessie Ray. Wake Up!, 2015. Mount Pleasant Community Art Screen, 2022. 

Stimson, Adrian, “Buffalo Boy: Then and Now.” Fuse Magazine, vol. 32, no. 2, 2009, pp. 18-25. 

St-Onge, Nicole J.M. “The Dissolution of a Métis Community: Pointe à Grouette, 1860–1885.” Studies in Political Economy 18.1 (1985): 149–172. Web. 

Toneguzzi, Mario. Hudson’s Bay Co. Launches Strategic Rebranding Amid Privatization. Retail Insider, 2020. 

Vizenor, Gerald. Fugitive Poems: Native American Indian Scenes of Absence and Presence. Lincoln, Nebraska: First Bison Book 2000, p.15. 

Whitehead, Joshua. Full Metal Indigiqueer: Poems. Talon Books, 2017. 

Wilson, I. Former Jean Caron Sr. House, Parks Canada, 2002.