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genuinescribble · 7 years ago

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Art Review Assignment

Ground Signals Origin of Exhibition: Surrey Art Gallery

Artists: Ruth Beer, Roxanne Charles, Marie Côté, Lindsay Dobbin, Richard Fung, Brandon Gabriel and Ostwelve, Farheen HaQ, Peter Morin, Valérie d. Walker and Bobbi L. Kozinuk, Charlene Vickers and Cathy Busby

Occasionally a commonality of interests comes together to create a period of work that opens our eyes to a hidden reality. This exhibit explores our relationship to the Canadian wilderness within the context of habitation and commodification through the lens of a non-westernized view. The Surrey Art Gallery’s current exhibition, Ground Signals, features several Canadian-based artists exploring the intersection of human habitation and the natural Canadian wilderness. Installations of sound, video, performance art, painting, and handcraft-based arts are among the more than dozen works which seek to re-frame our view of the land away from commodity, entertainment and Colonial identity. Gallery curator Jordan Strom, and emerging artist Roxanne Charles, of the Semiahmoo First Nation, collaborate to prepare an exhibit of works that represent artists both culturally diversified and imbued with a unique perspective of land. There is an overlying theme of non-commodity, activism, the modern and the ancestral within this intersection re-defined. I was fortunate enough to see the October 28, 2017 performance of artist Peter Morin with his work, “Experiments in Time Travel. This piece is part installation, part performance art and part ephemeral in that it lives in both time and space between mirrored installations in Surrey and Kamloops— a performance that continually reshapes all the components of this installation for a brief time. Circular motions dominate as Morin rips and tears fabric, buzz-cuts his hair, walks the perimeter of the shifting sand circle to the sounds of his partner’s drum. There is a sensation of the hypnotic in watching his movements beneath the flickering imagery of a gigantic video screen transmitting back and forth between Surrey and Kamloops. At the point where he brushes aside the sand to enter the circle, my mind registers a sense of shift, viewing with reverence the common space filled with flat black disks, a drum, deer antlers. His circular walk continues within the circle of sand until the objects and his behavior become a hot mess of disturbance. His keening voice and bowing form are raw emotion that I want to hide from as I can’t help but feel a sense of anguish at the effects of my modern society on our fragile earth. I feel my internal truth: we have lost respect for mother earth. Morin’s performance is a call to examine how I identify with the land. It is my understanding that Morin speaks from a perspective of his aboriginal heritage—people who inhabited this land long before Western culture defined the identity of this land as I came to know it. Morin exposes another identity of Canadian landscapes, hidden by an ingrained colonial view that embraces the commodification of land rather than our reverence for it. I am trying to know what he knows, he is showing me what his ancestors understood. In my search to understand how my awareness of this Canadian landscape has been so influenced by Colonial exposure, by the images available to me within my lifetime, my school experience and experience of Colonial history, I am also drawn to the video installation, Warkworth Castle, by Richard Fung, as part of his Landscapes (2008), video still. My reaction is an ah ha moment to watch the images superimposed upon one another. Scenes of a river with Aboriginal canoes appear and then fade out as the image of a English castle populates the landscape. I witness the “Southern Ontario vistas morphing into English Romantic landscape paintings” as described in the SAG literature. The castle, although it exists in the English County of Northumberland, literally occupies the shoreline of a southern Ontario waterway as a subtext to the Colonial claim on the land and landscapes of Canada. The history of the land prior to two hundred years ago is seen as ephemeral in this video. I was also initially drawn in by the imagery, which was reminiscent of the images I recall seeing in my elementary school books—the images that introduced the history of Canada to third and fourth grade students in the ‘70s. The work initially taps in to a nostalgia, yet Fung’s work, like Morin’s push me to reconsider what I know of this land and wilderness—to accept that there is a different perspective of this land we inhabit, other than the narrative provided me by the institution of western culture. The artists works raise questions of the Colonial narrative of the wilderness was uninhabited before ‘us.’ Geographical locations across Canada from the rain forests and wild pacific coast to the expanse of sandy shorelines of the Maritimes are re-defined by sound and imagery. It is a call to look beyond our romantic and commodified notions of a Canadian wilderness.

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snewaylh · 8 years ago

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Charlene Vickers, First Nations Artist, joins Gunargie, Woody, Sarvenaz and Cyrus.

#podcast #first nations #bahai

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christenclifford · 8 years ago

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CROSSROADS: NATIVE FEMINISMS: long draft of the piece I published on Hyperallergic today

(Mound: To The Heroes by Charlene Teters)

I published a piece on Hyperallergic today about The Feminist Art Project’s Day of Panels at CAA. The panels took place back in February, and for various reasons this piece slipped through the cracks, and only made it to editing and publishing this week. I love Hyperallergic and I am thankful to publish this work and bring some much needed attention to the work of Native Artists in a contemporary art setting. The Met only recently decided to display some Native art in the American collection. The piece I wrote was almost 3,000 words! Much too long. So I wanted to put the first version here, for anyone who wanted a little more information. It is less elegantly written, but has many more quotes, especially from the elders, whom I want to honor.

Christen Clifford,Thursday April 27, 2017

BREAKING THE BUCKSKIN CEILING:

CROSSROADS

This spring, the Met announced that it would begin including Native American art in the American Art collection. Back in February, for their 10th Anniversary, the Feminist Art Project undertook a reimaging of the art world that included handing over their first official full on the books partnership with the College Art Association to Indigenous contemporary artists and used their Annual Day of Panels to explore CROSSROADS: Art + Native Feminisms, a day of panels, performances, and dialogue. The event took place at the Museum for Arts and Design, a venue that embraces both craft and art — a categorical division that has historically been used to exclude artists of native ancestry from the mainstream art market. It was a day filled with ceremonies, deeply considered conversations, and moving performances, centering female, queer, and Indigenous experiences of the art world. Videos of the event have just been released and can be found here.

What do you think of when you think of Native art? Have you seen any art by Native American Women in a contemporary art gallery? Why are Indigenous communities so rarely represented in the art world?

February 17th, the night before the symposium, there was a maximum capacity crowd at Grace Exhibition Space for From The Belly Of The Beast a “shout out to the performance artist as antihero.” The evening was co-curated by Maria Hupfield and Katya Grokhovsky, and featured work by Charlene Vickers, Damali Abrams, Emilie Monnet and Dayna Danger, Emily Oliverira and Natalie Ball.

Cultural Appropriation is a problem for many Native Artists. Art historian Crystal Migwans writes here in Canadian Art Magazine about the connection between the “theft of ‘symbols’ such as the headdress with theft of land and lives.”

This symposium was an opportunity for New Yorkers to experience Native contemporary artists and elders in a mainstream contemporary art context, and for Indigenous Peoples from across Turtle Island to gather in New York, which is itself unusual.

The TFAP annual day of panels started with onscreen projections by The ReMatriate Project and an electric violin musical performance by Brooklyn based Laura Ortman. There was a blessing of the space and Connie Tell, the director of The Feminist Art Project at Rutgers introduced the three curators of the day of panels: Jaune-Quick-To-See Smith, Maria Hupfield (full disclosure: we are friends and artistic collaborators) and Kat Griefen

Griefen educated the audience on how to support the water protectors at Standing Rock and how to Divest from the Dakota Access Pipeline by passing out information to #defunddapl

Jaune-Quick-To-See Smith started off with a keynote:

“We are a part of everything…our future our past…we are seven generations…Um yeah, we still live under colonialism!....(being in nature) moves my inward parts with joy….the sacred is the land the sky the water…there’s no old man up in the sky….we are all made of the same earth….we are thankful for the ripples on the water….how can EuroAmericans understand? We don’t see China as the Far East. We see Europe as our Far East, China is our West…The great invasion came to our neighborhood…we see no horizon line, no delineation between human and earth…this is not hippy dippy stuff” The packed room erupts in laughter. ““The women support the men and the men support the women….For Native People the Process is meditative and playful and keeps one balanced….When I was born, only 1 in 10 Native babies survived. I consider myself a miracle….Race is only your DNA, culture is socially how you are raised and not the color of your skin.”

She read from Culture Poem, which had lines about birth and babies. “Is it washed in its mother’s urine and dried in the sun or is it slapped upside down? What happens to the umbilical cord? It’s a really important thing that umbilical cord. Some wear it in a pouch their whole lives.”

Tobacco was poured in the 4 corners of the room. Each introduced themselves in their Native language and then in English: their name, where they are from, where their parents are from, and where they were born.

The first panel, The Struggle for Cultural Capital in Contemporary Native American Art, was chaired by Diane Fraher a filmmaker and the Director of Amerinda Inc. and consisted of the elders Gloria Miguel, Muriel Miguel and Jaune-Quick-To-See Smith. They acknowledged that they as Indigenous people fight against forced assimilation. “This is rare occasion where we are in a mainstream venue.”

Gloria and Muriel Miguel are sisters, and part of the Spiderwoman Theatre Company. (full disclosure: I assisted Gloria teaching a theatre class to kids at a community center in Bushwick in the early 90’s, right after I graduated from NYU.)

Muriel talked about being a “city Indian” from Brooklyn. She was a shawl dancer and studied modern dance. She worked with Joe Chaikin and the Open Theatre and the group was interested in “new” storytelling techniques. “They said, wow Muriel, you are such a good storyteller! with such surprise and I said Well, Yeah!”

“But I really wanted to talk about women. Not feminism, but WOMEN.”

Gloria performed an excerpt of a powerful monologue that ended with the repeated, “I’m still here! I’m still here! I’m still here!”

Gloria and Muriel performed with their father in Wild West shows and next to the freaks in Coney Island. “He was a pretty good song and dance man,” said Gloria.

Gloria was living in Westbeth. She said, “I was talking about missing and murdered women 41 years ago. Our first piece for Spiderwoman was about sexual violence. We were, uh, nasty! We collected dirty jokes, racist jokes, we did a piece about men rubbing up against women on the subways! Spiderwoman saved our lives in so many ways.”

When Gloria went to Hollywood, an agent told her he couldn’t find any roles for her. “You look like you would knife someone in a dark alley!”

Jaune-Quick-To-See Smith spoke of making archives and writing. “The writing about Native art began in the 90’s; we are still missing the history of women in the 70’s. Our generation is the first to break the buckskin ceiling. We are pioneers (pioneers before there were pioneers - Indians!). We are renegades.”

One of the struggles for Native artists is to even be seen as contemporary. As Smith said, “They see us as Egyptians and Aztecs!”

At one point Robin Veder, the new editor at American Art Journal, stood and said that she specifically would like to include contemporary native art in it’s pages. The morning panels ended with questions about the future. Muriel Miguel said, “I want two-spirit theatre. I want queer theatre.” Smith Said, “Coyote is in cyberspace now.” Diane Fraher said, “It’s good to be an Indian. We can’t change the past but we can be who we are.”

Maria Hupfield introduced the afternoon with a Territorial Acknowledgement of the historically displaced Lenni Lenape here in New York City, home of the highest urban indigenous population today. In a moment of performed cultural recovery recent Lenape speaker, and decent Vanessa Dion Fletcher was invited to the stage to introduce her self in Lenape teach the audience to say "I am happy to meet you".

The afternoon panels started with The Problematics of Making Art While Native and Female. Chaired by Andrea Carlson, the panel included the next generation of artists Carly Feddersen and Ryan Elizabeth Feddersen, Dr. Julie Nagam from the University of Winnipeg and the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Grace Rosario Perkins of the Black Salt Collective and the artist Charlene Teters.

Carly Feddersen showed slides of her jewelry. Brainiac Broaches, 2016. Sterling silver, pink quartz, and white topaz. She defined “Human” as “One who has land and dream together.” She told us that we are “starstuff and earthstuff” and that she uses animals in her work because “before humans were the people animals were the people.” She showed a cameo called “Mother” that was a “fierce cameo” and a tribute to heavy metal band Danzig. She was wearing it, it was sublime.

Her sister, Ryan Elizabeth Feddersen, showed work from a series called Coyote Now! Which consisted of coyote bones cast and molds made which in turn created crayons shaped like coyote bones, which were then used in hands on art activity at The Tacoma Art Museum as a collaborative coloring installation about the trickster who may have had a hand in global warming. Participation, engagement with craft and retaking the DIY space from the masculine flavor of Maker Faire are all aspects of her work.

Dr. Julie Nagam spoke about her cross appointment as Canadian Research Co-Chair in the History of Indigenous Art in North America

in Winnipeg at both the University and the Art Museum. “I am there to indigenize the University and the Gallery.” Her installation “singing our bones home” utilizes video, sculpture and audio inside a wigwam, representing living history and the relocation of Indigenous bodies. When the visitor was inside, “your body triggered sounds.” She is organizing an Indigenous Curators Symposium for fall 2017 and is the lead for the Social Studies and Humanities Research Council project The Transitive Memory Keepers: Indigenous Public Engagement in Digital and New Media Labs and Exhibitions.

Grace Rosario Perkins of the Art Matters 2017 Black Salt Collective was especially interesting to me. Her work explores personal narrative, assimilation, and code switching. She said that her “GED class was right next to a comic book store and I learned to draw from comics.” Black Salt Collective is “all queer women of color… I believe in collaboration…we keep changing it up and creating our own language.” For their show Visions into Infinite Archives, “It was an archive that was defined by us.”

Charlene Teters is an artist and activist best known for her activism against the use of American Indian mascots. She spoke about objectification, “Everything that is ours is turned into an object. It is rare to be seen as a full fledged human being.” Her work about mascots began at the University of Illinois, where she was one of three Native Americans on campus. When one left in the middle of the night, a professor chanted, “One little, two little, three little Indians…” at her and ended with, “two left! Keep your mouths shut.” She described being persona non grata for all of the year except “around Thanksgiving, when I would get invited to 1,000 Thanksgiving dinners, none of which I went to.” Her piece Mound: To The Heroes (ABOVE) is a photo mural of the flag raising at Iwo Jima with only the Pima man, Ira Hayes, left. The juxtaposition of the Native American and the flag just out of his reach is an amazing metaphor for indigenous struggles for basic human rights on their own land.

At the end Carlson shared her experience of being a guest artist, “They think that Pocahontas is going to come and teach us about art.” Ryan said, “There is no word for art in indigenous language. In the Western world art is an object to be exhibited and sold but for us it’s about use, process, continuations of a practice and a dialogue.”

The next panel was called Kinship, Decolonial Love, and Community Art Practice and was chaired by Lindsay Nixon the recently appointed Indigenous Editor at-large for Canadian Art leading the Indigenous art and culture content initiatives, she said the artists come first. Panelists were independent artists Lyncia Begay, Dayna Danger, Marcella Ernest, and Tarah Hogue, of grunt gallery.

Nixon spoke of Decolonizing Love and a project called Decolonize Me, which she described as a critique of commercialization and an action of reconciliation related to the potlatch practice on the West Coast of maintaining social order, where we “give it all away.”

Dayna Danger said she wants to show off her community which includes two spirit, queer and BDSM people. As a “white presenting” artist she wants to make space and give power to those who need it. She was beading a leather mask while she was on the panel. She talked about an amazing project performance with naked people doused in baby oil who wear antlers as strap-ons.

She spoke about who it is that you center in your work. Who is the work really for? "For the people who are in it." And she said, in response to white cis male critic, "I don't care about that critique. You're right, it's NOT for you. If these bodies aren't there for you to consume, then it's garbage." When people ask her how much they can buy her masks for, she just says, "No." She beaded a close friends tattoo on a mask, "It’s part of our healing journey together…I mean a museum can borrow it and show it, but it's home is with her...she is the keeper of the mask." She also spoke about materiality in her life. "It brings people to me, like Where'd you get those wicked earrings?!?" And she spoke about decolonizing orgasm: "We can decolonize the things that we make, we have power and agency."

Marcella Ernest , whose work has shown twice as an off-site project during the Venice Biannale, is a filmmaker and artist whose interests lie in pop culture, building community support and visibility for indigenous women in same sex relationships and cultural preservation. Her film Odayin was a mirage of images and ambient sounds, layered and dreamlike.

Lycia spoke about cultural appropriation, land, gender and heteronormativitry. “I don’t want to be viewed as an exhibit. I share my work with community because we have the ability to change paradigms. I want to bring awareness to resource extraction, but I am very protective of my work. I create art for my sake, to show that its okay to love yourself.”

Tarah Hogue’s grunt gallery in Vancouver has been showing work since 1984. The #callresponse project supports the work of Indigenous North American women artists working locally across the continent, based in performance art it values lived experience and grounds art in responsible action.

The panelists were asked what they wanted and Lycia said, “I want our land back. I want education to be really for our kids, I feel like there’s always a gatekeeper, it feels one-centric.”

Marcella said, “I want to do the work that I do and feel safe.”

The last hour of the day was a presentation called The Teaching Is In The Making: Locating Anishaabe Feminism as Art Praxis and featured the work of independent artist Leanna Marshall and Celeste Pedri-Smith from Laurentian University, Nadia Kurd the curator of the Thunder Bay Art gallery and a response from Crystal Migwans from Columbia University, who introduced the work as a “transmission of knowledge.” In 1976, The Thunder Bay Art Gallery began collecting contemporary indigenous art. Thunder Bay, on Lake Superior, is a hub for 42 communities.

Marshall and Pedri-Smith’s collaboration reflects and multiplicity of perspectives informed by heritage that range for contemporary jingle dresses, archival photography, contemporary photographs and other bead and textile items.

Pedri-Smith sent a video as she could not attend: “I speak from heart as daughter, as a granddaughter, as a great granddaughter, as a great great granddaughter….I speak from decades and decades of colonial violence and successful resistance…making the dress brings you healing, your thoughts and feelings go into the dress…decolonization is about transformation…the artistic practice of resistance is simultaneously outward and inward…”

Leanna Marshall ended the day with a performance of NIMAMAATA MIYAW, about creating 8 story dresses from love for her family. Marshall sang/spoke and I took these notes from her voice.

“Even now when I talk I can feel her heart break…your kindness so deep I don’t possess this kindness….spiritual perfection your gift was love and it penetrates the most broken of hearts.”

I hope my notes encourage others to investigate and interact with these artists and their work. I hope this summary can somehow be a part of art reconciliation. I hope we all have more dialogue and action together.

Crossroads allowed attendees to share in a sacred space, one where process and materials are about a struggle to exist. The room was filled with elders and academics, knowledge carriers and artists. The ideas that were shared and discussed — dignity for humans and non-humans, land recovery, self-determination, and social relations — demonstrated solidarity and encouraged me to honor and question my ancestors. It was an important day of power and community-building, articulating connections between violence against women and violence against the land. The event was an ambitious, disturbing, and brilliant contribution to North American art and art history.

#thefeministartproject crossroads charleneteters gloriamiguel murielmiguel juanequicktoseesmith nativefeminisms tfap@caa CAA2017

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possessionblog · 9 years ago

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Charlene Vickers

Mixed-media sculptures

Website

#Charlene Vickers #First Nations Artists #Canadian Artists #Women Artists

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svlc · 12 years ago

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Charlene Vickers

#Charlene Vickers #Anishinabe #Anicinabe Park #Kenora #occupation #occupy #review

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formlines · 6 years ago

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Ovoid Felts

Charlene Vickers

#Charlene Vickers #Anishnabe #Fazakas Gallery

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postspecificpost · 13 years ago

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March 2, 2012

The rain is still falling as I make my way to East 2nd for the third time in a day. I had gone to Catriona Jeffries for Julie Feyrer's opening, but work is never seen at an opening. I have to go back to view and hear the work in the quietness of the day. To save time I should just stop attending openings all together. I never engage with the work and can never recall any of the conversations had beyond merely having them. But it's in these pockets where faces can be paired to names and we still need faces to go with names. Openings are the messy intersections where work smashes into life for the precariats in this game and they are emblematic of symptoms I do not reject but which I also cannot accept.

When I step back out into the damp drizzle on a darkening afternoon I head over to grunt to check out Charlene Vickers' Ominjimendaan/to remember. I am only there for a few minutes to be with the turtles. The show will travel next to Urban Shaman in Winnipeg and as there are no windows there I wonder which direction the turtle heads will face. But I'm not really thinking about this until sometime after as I'm back on the same block six hours later to see Justin Gradin and Justin Patterson do something together. The vagueness of most performance descriptions is a good trick when intentional, but some people really take it the wrong way. Both Justins have studio spaces at Dynamo and I only knew one of them until I am introduced to the other one during Feyrer's opening.

Here at this performance opening nothing is ready an hour after doors open and Karilynn is already here and not wanting to stay so I suggest we head to the Narrow for a drink. Back into the rain I walk two blocks for one drink though technically I have a double. Once inside we run into Sasha and Lauren who are just coming from Gallery Fukai's opening of Ian Skedd where they weren't sure if anything was actually going on. I get the sense though they just can't be bothered to talk about what wasn't going on as their feet were wet and their jackets were soaked -- though Lauren gets going a little bit when I ask her what she hates most about being back in Vancouver. I could have stayed for another double if I hadn't made the trip to East 2nd with a purpose so I head back to the performance space -- one of these open concept/loft/live/work/gallery/performance spaces that remind me of being 24 again.

The space is crowded now with bodies grouped into small islands and a looping projection of lulling waves on an empty beach that stays on for the entire night. I am no longer in a chatty mood so I hang back leaning against the makeshift wall and stare up at the corrugated steel ceiling that is making everyone so uncomfortably warm. I can hear a chorus of conversations around me that are more rising inflections than anything cognizant and I am not bored but I am suddenly exhausted. As I'm eyeing the exit, the performance begins and Justin P and Justin G appear in black hoods that look like gas masks with smoke stack looking snouts. Wires hang down their throats to pedals on their hips that are further connected to contact mics dangling from their hands. They start playing with garbage, activating, some would say, the perimeters of refuse. They pull staged scraps from a clean steel garbage can placed in the center of the room that could have been dirtier and less staged in its placement. I can see through the mask that Justin P has his eyes closed at times when he tilts his head back to project the bellows of distortion coming from his contact mic. He howls out the excess and howl is just about my favorite word in the English language. Justin G appears more methodical, more concerned with manipulating the mic against surfaces, and it's their contrast in approach that keeps me watching. They stay close to the ground with their masks and their Made in Canada garbage can churning out this soundscape and something decent is happening, not mind blowing -- that is not the point -- but they are decent because they are doing and it doesn't feel like wanking. The piece I feel is too long and it turns out to be only an excerpt of a longer work and album they are taking to Japan.

The lights come on and the girls behind the bar try to transform the MDF cubicle into a dance party, but the space clears and plans are made to head to The Cedar Tavern. My jacket hasn't dried from earlier as I walk to Cedar Tavern with Warren who knows the way and doesn't want to stay in the MDF cubicle any longer either. We've met a few times before but this is the second time we have a conversation about the art game and I once again get super worked up over the rules of the game. I cannot accept many factors of the game, but I don't know if there's a general misunderstanding that displeasure equals quitting and that playing only means compliance. Warren gives me a friendly warning that there will probably be people I have to introduce myself to when I get to the Cedar Tavern, but I save us both the trouble as I buy him a beer for walking with me and I split off.

It's an alleyway speakeasy with an unfortunate art history reference but the works inside do not match that reference. There's a small gallery space along the front with some forgettable paintings hanging on each wall and it becomes the only room in another wise crowded space that never seems able to hold anyone for long. Art showing is never half as interesting as art making, not even in its spatial correlations, and while this was even the subject matter of Feyrer's show with the damning title, we all play along as the gallery space is where the value of the work occurs in exchanges unfolding.

I run into waves of people coming from Samuel Roy-Bois' open house at Langara and the unanimous report was about the copious amounts of food from pigs in a blanket to a mountain of meatballs. I end up explaining to a Torontonian about the makings of a pupusa and he grew nostalgic for Jamaican patties. Zuzia joins the pupusa conversation as she arrives from Anza with Dawn, Jenny, and Mike. They were playing darts and doing shots and thought of me. She recommends a place off Nanaimo and Hastings for the best pupusas in town and I want to go there now. Aaron had recommended the place on Commercial, but I'm still researching the places on Victoria. It's best when we can sustain conversations about other things, which is maybe the difference between having friends and having peers. I talk about the shapes of the alphabet with someone named John and we learn together that a "m" is the letter "h" doing a back bend. Outside the randomness of conversations is slipping and I run into Justin P again. I tell him I liked his show and I meant it. Those who are left in the middle of the night share good-byes and the rain is still falling as I make my way home.

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