{"id":53586,"date":"2019-02-12T12:11:21","date_gmt":"2019-02-12T17:11:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=53586"},"modified":"2025-10-10T11:18:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T15:18:15","slug":"starting-conversations-about-indigenous-art","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/starting-conversations-about-indigenous-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Catalyst for Change: Curating Indigenous Art Means Starting a Conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Catalyst for Change: Curating Indigenous Art Means Starting a Conversation\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

If you\u2019re an Indigenous woman in Canada who wants to nurture and grow the vibrancy and capacity of your community, you can choose many paths \u2014 politician, teacher, mother, consultant and activist. Or you could roll those jobs into one and curate art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you think that\u2019s trite, you haven\u2019t been to a contemporary exhibit of Indigenous art lately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Variously provocative, devastating, educational, healing, unnerving, enlightening, inspiring, even arousing \u2014 the works of Indigenous artists in Canada overflow with passion and pain. They validate the experiences and realities of First Nations, M\u00e9tis and Inuit peoples and also offer a window into those experiences for non-Indigenous Canadians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But people who explore art, and assemble it for a specific purpose, multiply the impact of artistic expression by providing context and prompting viewers to consider larger, deeper questions. It\u2019s called starting a conversation, says Michelle LaVallee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LaVallee and Danielle Printup \u2014 two Indigenous curators \u2014 talked about their recent works and the complex professional challenges they face at a Carleton University Art Gallery<\/a> public discussion Feb. 4, 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lee-Ann Martin, whose Resilience<\/em> project saw the works of 50 Indigenous female artists displayed on billboards across the country during Canada\u2019s 150th celebration in 2017, was also scheduled to appear but was unable to attend, explained moderator Carmen Robertson, Canada Research Chair in North American Art and Material Culture<\/a> at Carleton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exploring the Budding Field of Indigenous Curation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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Nonetheless, the evening\u2019s presentations, and the lively question-and-answer session that followed, offered an engaging exploration of the budding field of Indigenous curation and of two women trying to carve out a place within its often exclusive circles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both LaVallee, director of the Indigenous Art Centre at Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada and a former curator at the MacKenzie Art Gallery<\/a> in Regina, and Printup, an Anishnabe-kwe from Kitigan Zibi Anishnabeg, Que., a programs assistant at the CUAG and up-and-coming curator, paid humble respects to the tenacious few Indigenous pioneers who paved the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But they both acknowledged it\u2019s still difficult to operate within those realms, especially LaVallee, who recently took a job with the federal government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI see that in the context of creative intervention. It isn\u2019t an Indigenous institution and it\u2019s not my space. I have to occupy it as those before me have,\u201d she said. \u201cSomebody\u2019s gotta work from the inside, right?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LaVallee has curated several groundbreaking exhibitions, including one on Professional Native Indian Artists Inc., seven Indigenous artists who fought for mainstream acceptance and recognition in the 1970s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She said it\u2019s deeply satisfying to work with artists and promote their ideas and insights. But given the number of art institutions across the country, she lamented how few employ Indigenous curators and educators. It\u2019s regrettable because art curation can be a powerful catalyst for change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOver time, we can change what people know and educate folks on how and why policies have been disastrous for generations of people,\u201d she said, \u201cbut also in the way Indigenous peoples in this land now called Canada are embedded in this country and how it has developed, and that we will continue to be integral as we move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For her part, Printup offered insight into her most recent exhibition Inaabiwin,<\/em> which comes to the Ottawa Art Gallery<\/a> this fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The exhibition, featuring the works of five Indigenous artists, explores how Indigenous peoples are reclaiming their relational approach to the Earth and to each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inaabiwin <\/em>means \u201cmovement of light\u201d in Anishnaabemowin and is used to describe lightning, but even finding such a word and daring to use it was challenging, said Printup, who knows only some words in her ancestral language. Consulting community members required time and patience and she felt vulnerable asking others to do work for her in a language she did not fully comprehend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy eagerness to want to learn, and this project behind me to do it, needed to be met with the reality that it\u2019s not there and there needs to be time and Elder discussions to create the word.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Defining Indigenous Art and Artist<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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But the process of exploring history through informal tea-and-coffee chats \u2014 of discussing concepts and severed connections, of seeing things through her own bicultural lens \u2014 is part of an Indigenous curator\u2019s job. That she can slow down and create her own process is a sign of progress, she added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robertson aptly punctuated the discussion in response to a question about decolonizing institutional authorities which define both artist and art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you don\u2019t start somewhere, you\u2019re never going to get anywhere. It\u2019s like we\u2019ve finally approached this time where there is the will to make changes and it hurts and it\u2019s not easy, but I think it\u2019s exciting times we live in right now,\u201d she said. \u201cWe have the opportunity to go back outside of these institutions and bring people together with us and make some changes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robertson\u2019s next CUAG panel discussion will feature political activist and former model kahntinetha Horn and her daughter, Kahente Horn-Miller, an assistant professor at Carleton\u2019s School of Indigenous and Canadian Studies, on Feb. 11 at 7 p.m. It coincides with the CUAG\u2019s current exhibition My Mom, kahntinetha Horn, the \u201cMilitary Mohawk Princess.\u201d <\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Find more information at cuag.ca<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re an Indigenous woman in Canada who wants to nurture and grow the vibrancy and capacity of your community, you can choose many paths \u2014 politician, teacher, mother, consultant and activist. Or you could roll those jobs into one and curate art. If you think that\u2019s trite, you haven\u2019t been to a contemporary exhibit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":52812,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[13],"cu_story_tag":[1930,1920,1927],"class_list":["post-53586","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_story_type-research-discovery","cu_story_tag-equity-diversity-and-inclusion","cu_story_tag-faculty-of-arts-and-social-sciences","cu_story_tag-indigenous"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":"blueprint"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/53586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/410"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/53586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97634,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/53586\/revisions\/97634"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=53586"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=53586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}