# data[].attributes.headline
10 Black Canadian Artists to Follow and Celebrate

# data[].attributes.subject
10 Black Canadian Artists to Follow and Celebrate

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
By, Lauren Battagello
The contributions of Black art and Black artists to the Canadian fine art world are immeasurable. Although they are seldom acknowledged for their boundless efforts, Black creatives have long functioned as the backbone of all mediums of artistry and creative expression, their art inspiring, mobilizing and healing communities.

This article pays tribute to the incredible and powerful Black Canadian artists that are reshaping and revolutionizing art as we know it. Check out their Instagrams, give them a follow and watch as your feed becomes a space of beauty.
1. Kosisochukwu Nnebe, previously based in Ottawa, Ont.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
10 Black Canadian artists to follow and celebrate - CanCulture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A curated list of Black Canadian fine artists you should be supporting on Instagram. By, Lauren Battagello The contributions of Black art and Black artists to the Canadian fine art world are immeasurable. Although they are seldom acknowledged for their boundless efforts, Black creativ

# data[].attributes.body
Born April 1988, is the first female graffiti artist of Afghanistan. Through her artworks, Shamsia portrays Afghan women in a male dominant society.

Her art gives Afghan women a different face, a face with power, ambitions, and willingness to achieve goals. The woman character used in her artworks portrays a human being who is proud, loud, and can bring positive changes to people’s lives. During the last decade of post-war era in Afghanistan, Shamsia’s works have brought in a huge wave of color and appreciation to all the women in the country.

Her artworks have inspired thousands of women around the world and has given a new hope to female Afghan artists in the country. She has motivated hundreds of Afghans to bring in their creativity through her graffiti festival, art classes, and exhibitions in different countries around the world.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This is the official website of Afghanistan's first graffiti artist, Shamsia Hassani. Shamsia's works have been exhibited in USA, Afghanistan, India, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, Italy, Turkey, and other countries. She has motivated hundreds of Afghans to bring in their creativity through her graffiti festivals, art classes, exhibitions in nine countries of three continents around the world.

# data[].attributes.headline
Productions Feux sacrés (PFS)- Indigenous Visual Artists

# data[].attributes.subject
Productions Feux sacrés (PFS)- Indigenous Visual Artists

# data[].attributes.body
La mission des Productions Feux sacrés (PFS) est de construire des ponts entre les artistes autochtones et les publics de tous âges et de tous les milieux, notamment les milieux urbains, afin que ces artistes puissent s’affirmer, se développer et mieux vivre de leur art.

# data[].attributes.headline
Questions to Ask When Reflecting on and Evaluating Your Arts Curriculum

# data[].attributes.subject
Questions to Ask When Reflecting on and Evaluating Your Arts Curriculum

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Inclusivity for All Learners in the Art Room - The Art of Education University

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As art educators, we not only want students to create art, but we also hope to create a learning environment where every student feels included, valued, and encouraged. The desire to create a positive experience in an inclusive art room helps drive everything we do. Our students know they are valued…

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Art Canada Institute - Institut de l'art canadien

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Norval Morrisseau (1931-2007) is considered by many to be the Mishomis, or grandfather, of contemporary Indigenous art in Canada. His life has been sensationalized in newspapers and documentaries while his unique artistic style has pushed the boundaries of visual storytelling. The creator of the Woodland School of art and a prominent member of the Indian Group of Seven, Morrisseau is best known for using bright colours and portraying traditional stories, spiritual themes, and political messages in his work.

Early Years

Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau was born in 1931 at a time when Indigenous peoples in Canada were confined to reserves, forced to attend residential schools, and banned from practising traditional ceremonial activities. He was the oldest of five children born to Grace Theresa Nanakonagos and Abel Morrisseau, and, in keeping with Anishinaabe tradition, he was sent to live with his maternal grandparents at Sand Point reserve on the shores of Lake Nipigon, Ontario. There, Morrisseau learned the stories and cultural traditions of his peoples from his grandfather Moses Potan Nanakonagos, a shaman trained within the Midewiwin spiritual tradition. From his grandmother Veronique Nanakonagos, he learned about Catholicism.

A present-day map of Northern Ontario showing the communities where Norval Morrisseau lived. Over time some of these place names have changed. Fort William amalgamated with Port Arthur in 1970 to become Thunder Bay. Sand Point is now known as Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek.

At age six, Morrisseau was sent to a residential school, part of an education system set up by the Canadian government in the 1880s. Residential schools, which operated until the last decades of the twentieth century, forcibly separated Indigenous children from their families and forbade them from acknowledging their cultures or speaking their traditional languages. At St. Joseph's Indian Residential School in Fort William, Ontario, Morrisseau faced sexual and psychological abuse that left him with deep emotional scars. After two years at St. Joseph's, and two more at another nearby school, he returned to Sand Point to attend a public school in nearby Beardmore.

Rock painting of Thunderbird at Cliff Lake in Wabakimi Provincial Park, Ontario.

Morrisseau left school at age ten because, according to curator Greg Hill, "Morrisseau was not like other children in his community. The young artist preferred to spend his time in the company of elders listening and learning, or completely alone, drawing." Morrisseau was interested in local petroglyphs and birchbark scroll images, but never received any formal art training. He wanted to draw things he had heard about or seen-like the sacred bear that had come to him in a vision quest, or spirit-beings such as Micipijiu or Thunderbird that were drawn on cliffs-but community members and relatives discouraged him, as Anishinaabe cultural protocols forbid the sharing of this ceremonial knowledge. When he was not drawing, Morrisseau spent time fishing, hunting, trapping, picking berries, and holding pulpwood-cutting and highway-construction jobs. In his early teens, he also began drinking alcohol.

When he was nineteen, Morrisseau became critically ill. His family arranged a healing ceremony, during which he received the name "Miskwaabik Animiiki" (Copper Thunderbird). Morrisseau explained, "That was a very, very powerful new name; and it cured me." When he was about twenty-three, however, Morrisseau became sick with tuberculosis and was sent to a sanatorium in Fort William. There he met Harriet Kakegamic, a fellow patient from the remote northern Cree community of Sandy Lake reserve. They married in the late 1950s and lived in Beardmore, where Morrisseau began to devote more time to his art. He painted on birchbark baskets made by his mother-in-law, Patricia Kakegamic, and on other objects.

(Clockwise from top left) Harriet, Norval, Pierre, and Victoria Morrisseau photographed in Toronto in March 1964.

Norval Morrisseau, Artist's Wife and Daughter, c. 1975, acrylic on hardboard, 101.6 x 81.3 cm, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, ON. Norval and Harriet Morrisseau had seven children together: Victoria, David, Pierre, Eugene, Christian, Michael, and Lisa.

An Emerging Artist

Like many young artists, Norval Morrisseau did not earn enough on which to live. Around 1958, he found a job at a gold mine and moved with Harriet to Cochenour, near Red Lake, Ontario. There he met Dr. Joseph Weinstein, a doctor who had trained as an artist in Paris, where he had developed ties to the European modern art scene. Joseph's wife, fellow artist Esther Weinstein, recalled a visit to McDougal's, the local general store, where "to my surprise, I saw those two very unusual paintings [including Untitled (Thunderbird Transformation), c. 1958-60] standing on the floor." Esther Weinstein asked the store proprietor, Fergus McDougal, to invite the artist to visit their home. Untitled, c. 1958, from that same period, may be the second painting to which she was alluding.

When Morrisseau knocked on the Weinsteins' door a few days later with paintings to sell, the couple quickly welcomed him, and he spent many hours reading their art books and discussing art with them. Art historian Ruth B. Phillips notes that Dr. Weinstein supplied Morrisseau with high-quality art supplies, such as paper and gouache paints, and encouraged him to consider himself a professional artist "in the Western sense, rather than as a producer of tourist souvenirs." This chance alliance between an Indigenous man and a cosmopolitan couple clearly introduced Morrisseau to a wider understanding of art, which inspired him.

Morrisseau's early work was also championed by Selwyn Dewdney, an anthropologist and artist who was recording pictograph sites in the area. In 1960, local police constable Bob Sheppard, who was stationed on McKenzie Island, near Cochenour, wrote to his friend Dewdney and suggested that he meet Morrisseau. The two were introduced in 1960, and, like the Weinsteins, Dewdney shared with Morrisseau his interest in modern art, including Mexican mural painting by Diego Rivera (1886-1957), Surrealist art by Salvador Dalí (1904-1989), and works by such artists as Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Henri Matisse (1869-1954). Unlike the Weinsteins, however, Dewdney initially encouraged Morrisseau to work in traditional media like birchbark and leather, though he also supported the artist's early experimentation in oils. He also likely pushed Morrisseau to sign his work in Cree syllabics, an alphabet Morrisseau had learned from his wife. Morrisseau in turn shared his cultural knowledge of rock art with Dewdney, who studied and wrote on the subject. Their correspondence offers insight into Morrisseau's aim to educate Canadians about Indigenous art and culture. Later, Dewdney urged Morrisseau to record a series of stories explaining the images in his art, which resulted in a book edited by Dewdney entitled Legends of My People: The Great

Around 1958, Morrisseau was also introduced to Susan Ross (1915-2006), a printmaker and painter from Thunder Bay who was sketching in the Cochenour area and specialized in painting portraits of local Indigenous people in a Post-Impressionist style. They became friends and Morrisseau came to depend on Ross for art supplies and answers to his questions about art. Morrisseau would send his paintings to Ross on the train from Red Lake to Thunder Bay, and he relied on her to sell them. With the proceeds from those sales, Ross bought Morrisseau art supplies and also a tape recorder so that he could better record the Anishinaabe stories told by his Elders. Their correspondence reveals Morrisseau's growing confidence in his role as an artist and his increasing awareness of European concepts of art.

Word of Morrisseau's art spread. Ross discussed it with Toronto gallery owner Jack Pollock, who then planned to seek Morrisseau out while on a trip to Beardmore in 1962 to teach a painting workshop sponsored by the Ontario government. Pollock later explained that it was Morrisseau who approached him. Describing Morrisseau as an odd artist with no artistic ties and living an isolated existence, Pollock noted that he was intrigued by the paintings and drawings he saw because of their "unique sense of space" and "effortless and flowing" composition. "I knew that Morrisseau was an artist with vision," he wrote later, "and I decided then and there that I would show them [the paintings] in Toronto."

Film still of Norval Morrisseau and Jack Pollock from the National Film Board documentary The Paradox of Norval Morrisseau, 1974.

Commercial Success

The 1962 exhibition of Norval Morrisseau's work at the Pollock Gallery in Toronto marked the first time an Indigenous artist had shown work in a contemporary art gallery in Canada, and the media hailed the debut as a new development in Canadian art. All the paintings sold on the first day and the exhibition instantly made Morrisseau a celebrity artist and a public figure.

Invitation to Norval Morrisseau's first solo exhibition, held at Pollock Gallery in 1962.

Yet success was a mixed blessing: both Morrisseau's work and his private life were subjected to scrutiny. His art received mixed reviews, judged by critics as either modern or primitive or a combination of the two, and Morrisseau himself was framed as a painter of legends, in keeping with the images of the "Imaginary Indian," the "Noble Savage," and the "Hollywood Indian" peddled by popular culture. This stereotypical attitude was moulded by deeply entrenched colonial views and had little to do with Morrisseau as an individual or an artist. Astutely, Morrisseau defied these conceptions: he attempted to take charge of his life story by challenging interviewers and critics. For example, in the Toronto Star in 1975, he responded to art critic Gary Michael Dault's query about the media's scrutiny of his private life:

I am tired of hearing about Norval the drunkard, Norval with the hangover,

Norval in jail, Norval torn apart by his allegiance both to Christianity and to the old Indian ways.... They speak about this tortured man, Norval Morrisseau-I'm not tortured. I've had a marvelous time. When I was drinking. Now that I'm not drinking. I've had a marvelous time in my life.

This effort had mixed results, as press reports typically characterized his challenges as rants.

Still, Morrisseau's paintings began to command attention in art circles, and his success generated interest in the work of other Indigenous artists across Canada. Collectors started to take contemporary Indigenous arts more seriously, and although Morrisseau was still living in Beardmore with Harriet and their growing family, he began to travel to Toronto to sell his works to dealers and to negotiate new commissions. He often relied on art dealers, politicians, and government employees to aid him in his efforts to promote his work. In 1965, the Glenbow Foundation in Calgary purchased eleven Morrisseau works, including Jo-Go Way Moose Dream, c. 1964, shown here. This significant sale led to more exhibitions, including one at the Musée du Québec (now the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec) in Quebec City the following year, that signalled a growing national interest in the artist's work.

Shortly after his exhibition at the Musée du Québec, Morrisseau was one of nine Indigenous artists commissioned to create work for the Indians of Canada Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal. His large-scale exterior mural showed bear cubs being nursed by Mother Earth, and when organizers raised concerns about this unorthodox image, Morrisseau decided to leave the project rather than censor his drawing. The mural was changed and completed by his friend and fellow artist Carl Ray (1943-1978). Through that commission, however, Morrisseau had met Herbert T. Schwarz, a consultant on the Expo pavilion, an antique dealer, and the owner of Galerie Cartier in Montreal. Schwarz encouraged Morrisseau to illustrate eight traditional Anishinaabe legends, which he published as Windigo and Other Tales of the Ojibways (1968).

Norval Morrisseau's mural for the Indians of Canada Pavilion at Expo 67. Commissioning Indigenous artists to design the Indians of Canada Pavilion at Expo 67 is now considered a pivotal step in acknowledging activism around and awareness of Indigenous issues in Canada, but Morrisseau left the project when government officials deemed his mural design of bear cubs nursing from Mother Earth to be too controversial.

Schwarz also organized Morrisseau's first international exhibition. Based on a solo show held at Galerie Cartier in 1967, a selection of works travelled to the Art Gallery of Newport, in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1968 and then on to Saint Paul Galerie in Saint-Paul-de-Vence in the south of France in 1969. Held in an area populated by European modern artists such as Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Marc Chagall (1887-1985), this show added to Morrisseau's credibility as an artist and established his international reputation. It is also when he became widely known as "Picasso of the North," which is how Schwarz marketed Morrisseau in the posters advertising the French exhibition.

Morrisseau's Decade

The 1960s established Norval Morrisseau as a noteworthy contemporary Indigenous artist in Canada, and he soon became an advocate for emerging artists. In 1971, artist Daphne Odjig (b. 1919), who owned Odjig Indian Prints of Canada Ltd., opened a small store of the same name on Donald Street in Winnipeg, which became a gathering place for artists working in the Indigenous art scene. Odjig then founded the Professional Native Indian Artists Inc. (PNIAI), which came to be known as the Indian Group of Seven, to promote and support Indigenous artists throughout Canada and to change the public's perceptions about them. In 1974, Odjig expanded her shop and established the New Warehouse Gallery, where the PNIAI's inaugural exhibition featured more than two hundred works. At the time, work by Indigenous artists was shown in museums of anthropology or mythologized as "souvenir" art rather than being exhibited in mainstream art galleries. The PNIAI, of which Morrisseau was a key member, was featured in exhibitions in Winnipeg, Montreal, and London, England.

Morrisseau, along with his brother-in-law Joshim Kakegamic (1952-1993) and fellow PNIAI member Carl Ray (1943-1978), worked to further awareness of Indigenous art by taking part in a series of educational workshops organized by the Ontario Department of Education at local schools and community clubs in northwestern Ontario. In these workshops, Morrisseau and his artist colleagues introduced budding Indigenous artists to their approaches to painting and drawing while demonstrating a form of visual storytelling.

Around the same time, three of Morrisseau's brothers-in-law, Henry, Joshim, and Goyce Kakegamic, formed the Triple K Cooperative in Red Lake, Ontario. It was a silkscreen company designed to give Indigenous artists control over the art they produced and access to new Indigenous and mainstream audiences. Morrisseau also began to produce graphic art, disseminating prints much more widely than his paintings and thereby strengthening an art movement built around his artistic vocabulary.

Norval Morrisseau standing in front of a mural at the Red Lake Indian Friendship Centre, 1960s. Morrisseau painted the figure in the centre section of the mural while Carl Ray painted the bird at left and Joshim Kakegamic painted the bear at right.

Morrisseau's position as a contemporary artist continued to confound the museum establishment in Canada, however. In 1972, when the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto purchased eleven paintings by Morrisseau, its curator of ethnology, Dr. Edward Rogers, acknowledged it was the first time the museum had acquired contemporary paintings. The Glenbow Museum in Calgary and the Museum of Civilization (now the Museum of History) in Gatineau also purchased Morrisseau's works, yet, like the ROM, did not know quite where to place them. Morrisseau had drawn attention to just how difficult it was for contemporary Indigenous artists to have their work taken seriously in the Canadian art scene.

Although this period was one of immense artistic productivity, Morrisseau continued to struggle with alcoholism, which had plagued him since his youth. In 1973 he was arrested for public drunkenness and incarcerated for six months in Kenora, Ontario. Ironically, it was a highly industrious time for the artist, as he was provided with an additional cell to use as an art studio and given a lot of time to paint. While in prison, Morrisseau created a series of sketches on paper towel, including Transmigration of the Human Soul into Another Existence, 1972-73, and such noteworthy paintings as Indian Jesus Christ, 1974. Upon his release, Morrisseau became the subject of two National Film Board of Canada documentary films, The Colours of Pride (1973) and The Paradox of Norval Morrisseau (1974). While the films reflect the assimilationist movement of the time, which aimed to extinguish Indigenous cultural distinctiveness, they also raised Morrisseau's profile in Canada and set the stage for significant public acceptance.

Eckankar: A New Spirituality

From the beginning of his career, Norval Morrisseau had featured strong Anishinaabe and Christian themes in his art; in the mid-1970s, however, he began to display a more personal hybrid spirituality. During this period, Morrisseau continued to work with art dealer Jack Pollock, whose assistant, Eva Quan, introduced him to the spiritual movement Eckankar. This doctrine combines Eastern spiritual traditions from India and China, and Morrisseau was primarily interested in two specific aspects: astral travel and spiritual light. "Through Eckankar, Morrisseau develops a vocabulary for his shamanism," wrote Greg Hill, and it is true that Morrisseau soon began to cast himself as a shaman artist beyond the strict protocols of Anishinaabe culture.

Documentation of Norval Morrisseau's tea party held in Beardmore, ON, 1978.

In the summer of 1978, Morrisseau, long fascinated with the British Royal Family (he named his eldest daughter Victoria), purchased china and a silver tea set in Toronto and told his art dealer that he dreamed of hosting a Buckingham Palace-style tea party. Pollock jumped at the opportunity to market this idea and flew a group of art collectors, art critics, journalists, and friends to Beardmore for the event. Morrisseau performed the role of shaman for his guests, leading a smudging ceremony and serving blueberry tea. The party, like the exploration of Eckankar, seemed to prompt Morrisseau to engage the notion of himself as a shaman artist publicly and led to artworks that fused Anishinaabe and Eckankar teachings. It was a path Morrisseau would pursue until the end of his career.

That fall, Morrisseau was appointed to the Order of Canada in recognition of his contributions to Canadian art. He had previously been awarded the Canada Centennial Medal in 1968 and had been made a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Art in 1973, yet this honour solidified his reputation as an artist of national and international stature. An exhibition entitled Art of the Woodland Indian at the recently created McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinberg, Ontario, also included an artist's residency at Tom Thomson's Shack on the gallery grounds, where Morrisseau painted and also met with visitors. It was proof that Morrisseau was riding a tide and being recognized as a significant force in Indigenous art.

Solidifying His Legacy

Saul Williams's Homage to Morrisseau is featured on the cover of the exhibition catalogue Norval Morrisseau and the Emergence of the Image Makers, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 1984.

By the 1980s, it was clear that Norval Morrisseau had inspired a new generation of artists. An exhibition curated by Tom Hill and Elizabeth McLuhan in 1984 at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto placed Morrisseau's work among pieces created by a larger group of artists, including Daphne Odjig (b. 1919), Carl Ray (1943-1978), Joshim Kakegamic (1952-1993), Roy Thomas (1949-2004), and Blake Debassige (b. 1956), who had followed Morrisseau's lead stylistically to create their own unique expressions. The show, entitled Norval Morrisseau and the Emergence of the Image Makers, celebrated Morrisseau's significance as an artist and a trailblazer of an artistic movement called the Woodland School. Saul Williams's (b. 1954) Homage to Morrisseau, 1979-80, which was featured on the cover of the exhibition catalogue, clearly illustrates how important Morrisseau's visual vocabulary was to the group.

In early 1987, Morrisseau's work was celebrated as part of a series of group art events involving other Indigenous artists, such as Saskatchewan Cree artist Allen Sapp (b. 1928). His art also appeared in a solo exhibition in Santa Barbara, California, organized by Canadian actor John Vernon. During this time, the artist, who had been sober for a number of years, returned to drinking. In March, he was discovered living on the streets of downtown Vancouver. The press pounced on the story: for most of a month, Morrisseau was front-page news as reporters charted the ups and downs of his misfortune. When Morrisseau recovered and started painting again, the press showed little interest.

In 1989, Morrisseau was included in an important international art exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris that was organized to coincide with the two hundredth anniversary of the French Revolution. Magiciens de la Terre, curated by Jean-Hubert Martin, included one hundred contemporary artworks: fifty by Western artists and fifty by non-Western artists. It was an attempt to counteract the ethnocentric practices of most exhibitions at the time, but it has since been scorned as one of the last shows to frame Indigenous arts within a discourse of primitivism. Still, being selected for the exhibition marked a milestone in Morrisseau's career.

Installation view of Norval Morrisseau's Untitled, n.d., and Artist With Thunderbird Vision (The Visionary), 1977, in the Magiciens de la Terre exhibition in Paris, France, 1989.

Installation of Morrisseau's Androgyny, 1983, and Man Changing into Thunderbird, 1977, in the exhibition Norval Morrisseau: Shaman Artist at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 2006.

For more than a decade afterward, Morrisseau, aging and suffering from Parkinson's disease, faded from view as interest in his work waned. That changed, however, when the National Gallery of Canada mounted an exhibition of Morrisseau's oeuvre in 2006. It was the first retrospective for a contemporary Indigenous artist ever held at the gallery, and it renewed interest in Morrisseau's art and shifted the public's understanding of its importance to the history of Canadian art. Because much of Morrisseau's work was scattered in private and public collections, many Canadians had never seen his paintings, and certainly had never seen so many of his key pieces in one place at the same time. Morrisseau revelled in the attention at the openings in Ottawa and subsequent locations as the exhibition travelled in Canada and the United States. The following year, on December 2, 2007, Morrisseau died of complications related to Parkinson's disease, leaving intact his legacy as the Mishomis, or grandfather, of contemporary Indigenous art in Canada.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Norval Morrisseau (1931-2007) is considered by many to be the Mishomis, or grandfather, of contemporary Indigenous art in Canada. His life has been sensationalized in newspapers and documentaries while his unique artistic style has pushed the boundaries of visual storytelling.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
To create a diverse and vibrant community through the support of LGBTQ+ art and artists across generations and disciplines.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Queer|Art is a non-profit arts organization serving a diverse and vibrant community of LGBTQ+ artists across generations and disciplines.

# data[].attributes.headline
8 LGBTQI+ Artists You Should Know - Google Arts & Culture

# data[].attributes.subject
8 LGBTQI+ Artists You Should Know - Google Arts & Culture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
8 LGBTQI+ Artists You Should Know - Google Arts & Culture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Be inspired by these 8 influential LGBTQI+ artists

# data[].attributes.body
Kara Walker is best known for exploring the raw intersection of race, gender, and sexuality through her iconic, silhouetted figures.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Look for the plus icon next to videos throughout the site to add them here.

Save videos to watch later, or make a selection to play back-to-back using the autoplay feature.

{{watchlist.lookupAttr('progress', video)}} / {{watchlist.lookupAttr('runtime', video)}}

Watch again

{{watchlist.lookupAttr('runtime', video);}}

Kara Walker was born in Stockton, California, in 1969. She received a BFA from the Atlanta College of Art in 1991, and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1994. The artist is best known for exploring the raw intersection of race, gender, and sexuality through her iconic, silhouetted figures. Walker unleashes the traditionally proper Victorian medium of the silhouette directly onto the walls of the gallery, creating a theatrical space in which her unruly cut-paper characters fornicate and inflict violence on one another.

In works like Darkytown Rebellion (2000), the artist uses overhead projectors to throw colored light onto the ceiling, walls, and floor of the exhibition space; the lights cast a shadow of the viewer's body onto the walls, where it mingles with Walker's black-paper figures and landscapes. With one foot in the historical realism of slavery and the other in the fantastical space of the romance novel, Walker's nightmarish fictions simultaneously seduce and implicate the audience.

Walker's work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. A 1997 recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, Walker was the United States representative to the 2002 Bienal de São Paulo. Walker currently lives in New York, where she is on the faculty of the MFA program at Columbia University.

Kara Walker & Jason Moran

53:44

Conversation Starter

Some works of art are just as much about hearing as they are about seeing.

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Art21's senior education advisor, Joe Fusaro, shares how he makes meaningful connections between his art practice and being an arts educator.

Deep Focus

Anthony Merino details the necessary overhaul of art historical traditions predicated on prejudice and exclusion.

Interview

Kara Walker discusses her 2002 exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum, Insurrection! (Our Tools Were Rudimentary, Yet We Pressed On).

Interview

Kara Walker talks about her interpretation of Gone with the Wind, and how it inspired her first silhouette piece, Gone, An Historical Romance of Civil War As it Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs of Young Negress and Her Heart.

Artist at Work

24 Images

Artwork Survey: 2000s

4 Images

Artwork Survey: 1990s

7 Images

Donate

Art21 is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization; all donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Art21 is a celebrated global leader in presenting thought-provoking and sophisticated content about contemporary art, and the go-to place to learn first-hand from the artists of our time. A nonprofit organization, Art21's mission is to inspire a more creative world through the works and words of contemporary artists.

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.saatchigallery.com/artist/shadi_ghadirian

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Look for the plus icon next to videos throughout the site to add them here.

Save videos to watch later, or make a selection to play back-to-back using the autoplay feature.

{{watchlist.lookupAttr('progress', video)}} / {{watchlist.lookupAttr('runtime', video)}}

Watch again

{{watchlist.lookupAttr('runtime', video);}}

Brian Jungen was born in Fort St. John, British Columbia, Canada in 1970. He draws from his family's ranching and hunting background, as well as his Dane-zaa heritage, when disassembling and recombining consumer goods into whimsical sculptures. Jungen transforms plastic chairs into whale skeletons, garbage bins into a giant turtle carapace, sewing tables into a basketball court, golf bags into towering totem poles, and collectible Nike Air Jordan shoes into objects resembling both the ceremonial masks of British Columbian coastal tribes and abstract modernist sculptures.

At once direct and disarming, Jungen's sculptures are entirely familiar in their material and assembly and yet still trick the eye through complex and deft illusions. He has created many works involving animals, from habitats and playgrounds for household pets, to paintings and drums utilizing stretched and tanned hides-demonstrating an interdependence between people and other species as well as between aesthetic form and function. While exquisite for their craftsmanship and graphic use of pattern and color, Jungen's works also contain subtle critiques of labor practices, global capitalism, and cultural stereotypes.

Brian Jungen attended Emily Carr College of Art + Design (BFA, 1992). Jungen's awards and residencies include the Gershon Iskowitz Prize (2010), Capp Street Project (2004), Sobey Art Award (2002), and The Banff Centre for the Arts residency (1998). Jungen has had major exhibitions at Hannover Kunstverein (2013); Bonner Kunstverein (2013); Art Gallery of Ontario (2013, 2011); Documenta (2012); Shanghai Biennial (2012); Smithsonian Institute-National Museum of the American Indian (2009); Sydney Biennale (2008); Witte de With, Rotterdam (2007); Lyon Biennial (2007); Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (2006); Tate Modern, London (2006); Vancouver Art Gallery (2006); New Museum, New York (2005); and the Vienna Secession (2003), among others. Brian Jungen lives and works in North Okanagan, BC, Canada.

Donate

Art21 is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization; all donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Art21 is the world's leading source to learn directly from the artists of our time. The mission of Art21 is to educate and expand access to contemporary art through the production of documentary films, resources, and public programs.

# data[].attributes.headline
El Anatsui: Studio Process | Art21 "Extended Play"

# data[].attributes.subject
El Anatsui: Studio Process | Art21 "Extended Play"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
El Anatsui: Studio Process | Art21 "Extended Play"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Zanele Muholi is one of the most acclaimed photographers working today, and their work has been exhibited all over the world. With over 260 photographs, this exhibition presents the full breadth of their career to date.

Muholi describes themself as a visual activist. From the early 2000s, they have documented and celebrated the lives of South Africa's Black lesbian, gay, trans, queer and intersex communities.

In the early series Only Half the Picture, Muholi captures moments of love and intimacy as well as intense images alluding to traumatic events - despite the equality promised by South Africa's 1996 constitution, its LGBTQIA+ community remains a target for violence and prejudice.

In Faces and Phases each participant looks directly at the camera, challenging the viewer to hold their gaze. These images and the accompanying testimonies form a growing archive of a community of people who are risking their lives by living authentically in the face of oppression and discrimination.

Other key series of works, include Brave Beauties, which celebrates empowered non-binary people and trans women, many of whom have won Miss Gay Beauty pageants, and Being, a series of tender images of couples which challenge stereotypes and taboos.

Muholi turns the camera on themself in the ongoing series Somnyama Ngonyama - translated as 'Hail the Dark Lioness'. These powerful and reflective images explore themes including labour, racism, Eurocentrism and sexual politics.​

The exhibition is based on the artist's 2020-21 exhibition at Tate Modern and will include new works produced since then.
The Huo Family Foundation
Research supported by Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational.
The exhibition in 2020 was supported by the Zanele Muholi Exhibition Supporters Circle, Tate Patrons and Tate Members

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Zanele Muholi is one of the most acclaimed photographers working today, and their work has been exhibited all over the world. With over 260 photographs, this exhibition presents the full breadth of their career to date. Muholi describes themself as a visual activist.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In Family Tree, Mutu presents thirteen portraits arranged as a genealogy of three generations. This ancestral pantheon, with its figures that are at once primitive and futuristic in their combination of human, animal, alien, and mechanical parts, demonstrates Mutu's long-standing interest in transformation and adaptation as a necessary means of survival. Most of the figures in Family Tree include illustrations of organs from old medical journals, relating Western medicine's historical dissections of the human body to the carving up of the African continent under colonialism.

This early work sets the stage for Mutu's ongoing investigation of cultural hybridization and displacement, featuring symbols and strategies that will continue to figure in her subsequent practice. Seeking to complicate notions of racial identity, Mutu used bits and pieces drawn from many ethnicities to assemble the facial features of this creature, whose baldness only adds to her alien quality.

At once beautiful and grotesque, the figure's body is also hard to decipher, with its multicolored patterning reading as skin or a catsuit, or both. The landscape is dotted with mushrooms- fungi that have no roots and flourish in inhospitable areas without sunlight-which can serve as a metaphor for immigration.

Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey is the first survey in the United States of this internationally renowned, Brooklyn-based artist. Spanning from the mid-1990s to the present, the exhibition unites more than fifty pieces, including Mutu's signature large-scale collages as well as video works, never-before-seen sketchbook drawings, a site-specific wall drawing, and sculptural installations.

Born in Nairobi, Kenya, Mutu scrutinizes globalization by combining found materials, magazine cutouts, sculpture, and painted imagery. Sampling such diverse sources as African traditions, international politics, the fashion industry, pornography, and science fiction, her work explores gender, race, war, colonialism, global consumption, and the exoticization of the black female body. Mutu is best known for spectacular and provocative collages depicting female figures-part human, animal, plant, and machine-in fantastical landscapes that are simultaneously unnerving and alluring, defying easy categorization and identification. Bringing her interconnected ecosystems to life for this exhibition through sculptural installations and videos, Mutu encourages audiences to consider these mythical worlds as places for cultural, psychological, and socio-political exploration and transformation.

Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey is organized by the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University by Trevor Schoonmaker, Chief Curator and Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher Curator of Contemporary Art. The Brooklyn Museum presentation is coordinated by Saisha Grayson, Assistant Curator, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At 560,000 square feet, the museum is New York City's second largest in physical size and holds an art collection with roughly 1.5 million works.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Black Woman Artist Who Crafted a Life She Was Told She Couldn't Have

# data[].attributes.subject
The Black Woman Artist Who Crafted a Life She Was Told She Couldn't Have

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Black Woman Artist Who Crafted a Life She Was Told She Couldn’t Have (Published 2021)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
At the dawn of the Harlem Renaissance, Augusta Savage fought racism to earn acclaim as a sculptor, showing her work alongside de Kooning and Dalí. But the path she forged is also her legacy.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Liberation of Aunt Jemima Art Interpretation

# data[].attributes.subject
The Liberation of Aunt Jemima Art Interpretation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Today's artwork is The Liberation of Aunt Jemima by Betye Saar.

Exploring Tough Topics through Art

This artist uses stereotypical and potentially-offensive material to make social commentary. I feel it is important not to shy away from these sorts of topics with kids. We can't sugar coat everything and pretend these things don't exist if we want things to change in our world. We need to have these hard conversations and get kids thinking about the world and how images play a part in shaping who we are and how we think. Art is an excellent way to teach kids about the world, about acceptance, and about empathy.

Betye Saar's The Liberation of Aunt Jemima

This artwork is an assemblage which is a three-dimensional sculpture made from found objects and/or mixed media. It's essentially like a 3d version of a collage.

In the artwork, Saar included a knick-knack she found of Aunt Jemina. It was Aunt Jemima with a broom in one hand and a pencil in the other with a notepad on her stomach. Instead of the pencil, she placed a gun, and in the other hand, she had Aunt Jemima hold a hand grenade. In the spot for the paper, she placed a postcard of a stereotypical " mammy" holding a biracial baby. The mammy's skirt is made up of a black fist, a black power symbol. She put this assemblage into a box and plastered the background with Aunt Jemima product labels.

Art Discussion Questions

Okay, now that you have seen the artwork with the description, think about the artwork using these questions as a guide. Or, use these questions to lead a discussion about the artwork with your students.

What was your first reaction to seeing this image?

What do these images remind you of?

Describe the women in this image. What is wrong about how they are portrayed?

What is the artist trying to say by putting these objects and images together? What is her message?

Saar called this her first protest piece. What is she protesting?

Why do you think the artist included the gun and hand grenade? Do you think they symbolize violence or something else?

Interpretation of Betye Saar's The Liberation of Aunt Jemima

Saar's goal in using these controversial and racist images was to reclaim them and turn them into positive symbols of empowerment. Instead of me telling you about the artwork, let's hear it from the artist herself!

Watch this video of Betye Saar discussing The Liberation of Aunt Jemima:

Isn't it so great we have the opportunity to hear from the artist?

Related Art Learning Activities

Use these activities to further explore this artwork with your students.

Stereotypes Art Project:

Students can make a mixed-media collage or assemblage that combats stereotypes of today. It's easy to see the stereotypes and inappropriateness of the images of the past, but today these things are a little more subtle since we are immersed in images day in and day out. Have students look through magazines and contemporary media searching for how we stereotype people today through images ( things to look for: weight, sexuality, race, gender, etc.). Then, have students take those images and change and reclaim them as Saar did with Aunt Jemima.

Research and Writing Activity:

Have students study stereotypical images of African Americans from the late 1800s and early 1900s and write a paper about them. They also could compare the images from the past with how we depict people today ( see art project above).

Study More Artists:

Have students study other artists who appropriated these same stereotypes into their art like Michael Ray Charles and Kara Walker. Students can look at them together and compare and contrast how the images were used to make a statement. Note: I would not study Kara Walker with kids younger than high school. There are some disturbing images in her work that the younger kids may not be ready to look at.
This post was originally published on February 15, 2015.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Today's artwork is The Liberation of Aunt Jemima by Betye Saar. This artist uses stereotypical and potentially-offensive material to make social commentary. I feel it is important not to shy away from these sorts of topics with kids. We can't sugar coat everything and pretend these things don't exist if we want things to change in our world.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
STATEMENT BY GORD DOWNIE Ogoki Post, Ontario

September 9, 2016

Mike Downie introduced me to Chanie Wenjack; he gave me the story from Ian Adam's Maclean's magazine story dating back to February 6, 1967, "The Lonely Death of Charlie Wenjack."

Chanie was a young boy who died on October 22, 1966, walking the railroad tracks, trying to escape from the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School to walk home. Chanie's home was 400 miles away. He didn't know that. He didn't know where it was, nor know how to find it, but, like so many kids - more than anyone will be able to imagine - he tried. I never knew Chanie, the child his teachers misnamed Charlie, but I will always love him.

Chanie haunts me. His story is Canada's story. This is about Canada. We are not the country we thought we were. History will be re-written. We are all accountable, but this begins in the late 1800s and goes to 1996. "White" Canada knew - on somebody's purpose - nothing about this. We weren't taught it; it was hardly ever mentioned.

All of those Governments, and all of those Churches, for all of those years, misused themselves. They hurt many children. They broke up many families. They erased entire communities. It will take seven generations to fix this. Seven. Seven is not arbitrary. This is far from over. Things up north have never been harder. Canada is not Canada. We are not the country we think we are.

I am trying in this small way to help spread what Murray Sinclair said, "This is not an aboriginal problem. This is a Canadian problem. Because at the same time that aboriginal people were being demeaned in the schools and their culture and language were being taken away from them and they were being told that they were inferior, they were pagans, that they were heathens and savages and that they were unworthy of being respected - that very same message was being given to the non-aboriginal children in the public schools as well...They need to know that history includes them." (Murray Sinclair, Ottawa Citizen, May 24, 2015)

I have always wondered why, even as a kid, I never thought of Canada as a country - It's not a popular thought; you keep it to yourself - I never wrote of it as so. The next hundred years are going to be painful as we come to know Chanie Wenjack and thousands like him - as we find out about ourselves, about all of us - but only when we do can we truly call ourselves, "Canada."

"Do we want to live in a haunted house the rest of our lives?" - Joseph Boyden

Proceeds from the sale of Secret Path will go to The Gord Downie Secret Path Fund for Truth and Reconciliation via The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at The University of Manitoba.

Gord Downie began Secret Path as ten poems incited by the story of Chanie Wenjack, a twelve year-old boy who died fifty years ago on October 22, 1966, in flight from the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School near Kenora, Ontario, walking home to the family he was taken from over 400 miles away. Gord was introduced to Chanie Wenjack (miscalled "Charlie" by his teachers) by Mike Downie, his brother, who shared with him Ian Adams' Maclean 's story from February 6, 1967, "The Lonely Death of Charlie Wenjack."

The stories Gord's poems tell were fleshed into the ten songs of Secret Path with producers Kevin Drew and Dave Hamelin. Recording took place over two sessions at the Bathouse in Bath, Ontario, November and December 2013. The music features Downie on vocals and guitars, with Drew and Hamelin playing all other instruments, except guest contributions by Charles Spearin (bass), Ohad Benchetrit (lap steel/guitar), Kevin Hearn (piano), and Dave "Billy Ray" Koster (drums).

In winter 2014, Gord and Mike brought the recently finished music to comic artist Jeff Lemire for his help illustrating Chanie's story, bringing him and the many children like him to life.

Secret Path acknowledges a dark part of Canada's history - the long-supressed mistreatment of Indigenous children and families by the residential school system - with the hope of starting our country on a road to reconciliation.

The ten song album will be released by Arts & Crafts accompanied by Lemire's eighty-eight page graphic novel published by Simon & Schuster Canada. Secret Path will arrive on October 18, 2016, in a deluxe vinyl and book edition, and as a book with album download.

Downie's music and Lemire's illustrations inspired The Secret Path, an animated film broadcast by CBC in an hour-long commercial-free television special in Sunday, October 23. The Secret Path and Road to Reconciliation panel discussion can be watched at cbc.ca/secretpath.

1. The Stranger
2. Swing Set
3. Seven Matches
4. I Will Not Be Struck
5. Son
6. Secret Path
7. Don't Let This Touch You
8. Haunt Them, Haunt Them, Haunt Them
9. The Only Place To Be
10. Here, Here and Here

STATEMENT BY JEFF LEMIRE
I first met Gord Downie and his brother Mike back in the winter of 2014. They wanted to discuss a potential project and, over coffee, they told me the story of Chanie "Charlie" Wenjack. Gord was then in the final stages of recording his incredible songs based on Chanie's life and he shared the rough mixes with me in the hopes that I would be interested in creating a graphic novel to accompany his album. Before we left the coffee shop I knew I was going to do it. I had to. Chanie's story is one that will not let you go once you hear it. It's a story that can't be ignored. And yet, somehow, it has been ignored. By nearly all of us.

Growing up white in Southern Ontario, I never learned about Chanie Wenjack or about any of the tens of thousands of other indigenous children like him who were part of Canada's residential school system. This is such a massive part of our country's history, yet our schools didn't teach us about it. Why? Maybe because it's easier to live with ourselves if we pretend stories like Chanie's never happened. But they did happen, and still happen. Chanie Wenjack lived and died, and no one knows his story.

I've spent the last three years living with Chanie's story and living inside Gord's music. Gord's haunting songs introduced me to Chanie Wenjack. Music is universal. It crosses languages and cultures and speaks to everyone, and I've always felt the medium of comics could do the same. It's our hope that one day Secret Path will be taught in schools and that it will help to shed a light on this all too often ignored part of Canada's past. I think, above all else, that's what Gord and I wanted to create: something that can't be ignored. Every Canadian should know Chanie Wenjack's name and I hope Secret Path helps to make that a reality.

The Secret Path is an animated film adaptation of Gord Downie's album and Jeff Lemire's graphic novel. Working with Downie's poetry and music, Lemire has created a powerful visual representation of the life of Chanie Wenjack. The film is divided into ten chapters, each a song from Downie's musical retelling of Chanie's story - from his escape from the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School, to his subsequent and heartbreaking death from hunger and exposure to the harsh weather. The final product is a uniquely immersive emotional experience - an insight into the life of a little boy who, as Gord has said, he never knew, "but will always love."

The Secret Path was created, written, and directed by Gord Downie, composed by Gord Downie with Kevin Drew and Dave Hamelin, and illustrated by author Jeff Lemire. The film is executive produced by Mike Downie, Patrick Downie, Gord Downie, and Sarah Polley. The Secret Path is produced by Entertainment One (eOne) and Antica Productions Ltd. in association with CBC, with the participation of the Canada Media Fund and the Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit. Jocelyn Hamilton is executive producer for eOne Television and Stuart Coxe is executive producer for Antica Productions. Animation is directed by Justin Stephenson, produced at Solis Animation Inc. and composited by Even Steven Inc.

The Secret Path was broadcast by CBC in an hour-long commercial-free television special in Sunday, October 23. The Secret Path and Road to Reconciliation panel discussion can be watched at cbc.ca/secretpath.

Proceeds from the sale of Secret Path go to the Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund and have supported initiatives such as The Gord Downie Secret Path Fund for Truth and Reconciliation via The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at The University of Manitoba.

The Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund (DWF) is a registered national charity that aims to build cultural understanding and create a path towards reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. With two national programs, Legacy Schools and Legacy Spaces, DWF aims to improve the lives of Indigenous people by building awareness, education, and connections between all peoples in Canada.

DWF's ability to build cultural understanding and create a path toward reconciliation between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous peoples is sustained by the generosity of our supporters. Every dollar raised directly supports the development of resources for DWF programming such as Legacy Schools, Legacy Spaces, and events that will improve awareness, and increase education and connections throughout Canada. Please visit www.downiewenjack.ca for information on how you can #DoSomething to further reconciliation.

For Willo, Clare, Louis, Clemens

For the place called 'Canada' - past, present, future

All of us.

Words by
GORD DOWNIE

Graphic Novel & Illustrations by
JEFF LEMIRE

Songs by GORD DOWNIE
with KEVIN DREW & DAVE HAMELIN

Produced and Mixed by
KEVIN DREW & DAVE HAMELIN

Vocals, Acoustic and Electric Guitars by GORD DOWNIE
All other instrumentation by KEVIN DREW & DAVE HAMELIN

Guest Musicians:
CHARLES SPEARIN - Bass
OHAD BENCHETRIT - Lap Steel & Additional Guitar
KEVIN HEARN - Additional Keys
DAVE "BILLY RAY" KOSTER - Drums

Engineered by NYLES SPENCER

Recorded and Mixed at The Bathouse Recording Studios, Bath, ON, Canada
November 3 - November 10, 2013
November 27 - December 2, 2013

Mastered by ERIC BOULANGER, The Bakery, Culver City, CA, USA

Art Direction by JONATHAN SHEDLETZKY
Design & Layout by ISIS ESSERY
Website Design by IAN PORTER

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Secret Path is a ten song album by Gord Downie with a graphic novel by Jeff Lemire that tells the story of Chanie Wenjack, a twelve year-old boy who died fifty years ago on October 22, 1966, in flight from the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School near Kenora, Ontario, trying to walk over 400 miles home to the family he was taken from.

# data[].attributes.headline
Shary Boyle and Shuvinai Ashoona on Their Collaboration

# data[].attributes.subject
Shary Boyle and Shuvinai Ashoona on Their Collaboration

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
I first saw Shuvinai Ashoona's drawings when I went to the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery at the University of Toronto in 2009 to install my own beside them. Nancy Campbell had curated us together, the first of the series of two-person exhibitions she presented at the JMBG, pairing northern and southern artists. I walked in to the gallery, where they had just ripped the brown paper off Shuvinai's newly framed work. I was stunned. I ran from one to the other. I intuited the energy of her drawings as flying; when an artist is deeply lost in their work and it's going very well, they fly. These drawings were high as a kite. I had never seen anything like them and I immediately felt, this is home. This is the shared home of imagination.

In February 2011 I traveled to Cape Dorset to meet Shuvinai, and spent three weeks drawing alongside the artists at Kinngait Studios. Shuvinai and I made our first drawing on the same page, which she titled Universal Cobra Pussy. Spending time with her on that trip I learned that Shuvinai often does not communicate in a linear, direct manner. Though completely lucid, understanding all she hears and as intelligent as anyone, her language is free-style poetics-like some kind of abstract shorthand riffing on Christian, visionary and pop-culture references. Ashoona responds to regular conversation with non-sequiturs; often she doesn't seem to be synced. But the longer I spend talking with her, the more I catch meaning out of the corner of my ear. Communication happens indirectly, with a non-linear timeline and shifting subjects. This reminds me of how art works.

I saw Shuvinai a few times in Toronto after my first trip to Nunavut. She came to my old studio in the Junction to check out my ceramics and drink tea. Another time I took her to the new Aquarium to share that underwater freakout. In late summer this year, I made four drawings in Montreal and left half of each blank. At the same time, Shuvinai made three in Cape Dorset, leaving regions of white space. I flew up in late September 2015, and for five days we worked side by side again at the Kinngait studios. Swapping drawings, we spent all weekend alone listening to music, chatting, cracking jokes and quietly filling each other's paper. Once in a while we'd go back onto the same page while the other was working. But mostly it was a straight exchange, an offering, giving up control and authorship to shared belief and trust. For me, the experience was thrilling, a fantastic game, and very serious at the same time. I had a lot I wanted to say to her in those drawings.

I asked her about her experience collaborating with me, after the opening reception of our co-exhibit, "Universal Cobra" on November 7, 2015. Our conversation refers to details contained in the two works in the slideshow above.

Shary Boyle: ...Remember when I gave it [Self Portrait] to you, and I just gave you that guy, all alone?

Shuvinai Ashoona: It seems like everybody else.... It appeared to be like me and they exchanged, the face exchanged, I don't know if it was me.

SB: Did you think it was you?

SA: No.

SB: I didn't think it was you either.

SA: Then it turned itself to be according to this one [she points at the figure on the left], but it's not me, for the rest of my life.

SB: So who is that?

SA: Maybe some...grandchild?

SB: Those are mirrors, eh? So is this little snake showing that person?

SA: Yes.

SB: And is that your coat?

SA: Yeah. But I forgot the pockets.

SB: Where's she going to put her phone?

SA: I don't know.

SB: And the rabbits. All of a sudden there's these little bunnies in your work. They're so soft. Is that because her foot is bare and you wanted to keep it warm? It's so soft.

SA: No I was thinking that eh, I really don't care, I didn't expect them to be under her foot but I think I put them the way that they are.

SB: To balance the nest with the eggs, and so you put it there to balance like in the composition. But is she just stepping on the bunny because she doesn't care about it?

SA: Yup I think so.

SB: It's more like ah, whatever, I'm going to crush you because I don't even see you.

SA: Yeah. Exactly.

SB: And these little eggs you put there. Because this looks so fragile to me, the eggs are so delicate, and then that big peg leg is going right into those delicate eggs. Did you think about that?

SA: No. They go take the eggs, according to... "Hey go run after those eggs before we head off out there to the same town we came from." It's probably those.

SB: So there's a time for you to go gather those eggs. When does that happen?

SA: Maybe before they get to be little babies in there.

SB: So is it in the spring?

SA: Mmm hmmm.

SB: ...I'm going to ask you about [Black Marble], because I was so amazed by this drawing; it kind of blew my mind what you did with it.... You were saying something about that "world" character eating the babies?

SA: Maybe I was thinking of my spiders. But I don't think of spiders anymore. I was thinking of how I made one little spider survive by not squashing it with my foot.

SB: That's a nice thing. Do you have any myths about not hurting spiders, about not squashing them?

SA: No, I don't think so. I would squash 'em again if I had to.

SB: Here we say if you squash a spider, you'll make it rain. But this guy you told me the other day, that world was getting so fat because he couldn't stop eating.

SA: The spider?

SB: This big "world" guy with the spider face. That sounded kind of right to me because if he's eating his babies it's a bit awful.

SA: Yeah?

SB: Yeah.

SA: I didn't know anything about the babies until Cain and Abel. And these two looked like Adam and Eve.

SB: Adam and Eve, yes, the head and the body.

SA: According to that...that curious snake.

SB: So they're kind of pairings right?

SA: Mmm hm.

SB: And what's happening with that creature and the lady there?

SA: It's dropping it off, down where it's supposed to go. It's supposed to land somewhere.

SB: Oh yes it's going to land, so it's mid air, she's flying.

SB: Is that a crack? A big crevice in the earth kind of? That it's going to go down?

SA: No, I don't think so. Like, I would tend to make it up there in the dark space.

SB: So it's kind of like the sky. And how about this big character with the polar bear? She's getting bigger.

SA: Curiouser and curious.

SB: Like the polar bear is so curious to see what's happening down there, that it's coming out. It's going to birth itself.

SA: This one became a wolf-man or something.

SB: That one's kind of like a wolf-man isn't he? Because he's got hair. But are they friends these two?

SA: Yup, for sure they are.

SB: Because he's piggy backing him.

SA: They're helping each other for sure.

SB: What do you think she's doing? Is she making this picture? [ Shary points to the marble sculpture with twig arms.]

SA: She's helping out what they're supposed to do.

SB: Yeah. I saw how you put the leaves and stuff at the end of the branches; I thought that was very beautiful. And then this guy. Is he a turtle? A snake?

SA: Maybe some sort of a snake.

SB: But he's got this little brown penis.

SA: I know; it's a human.

SB: That's really funny...

SA: And the hair is blonde.

SB: Oh yeah that's right, you were saying he's blonde. It's very important that that snake is blonde! This is a very wild drawing. There are a lot of stories happening that are just like dreams, eh? For me when I was doing this I thought of that museum sculpture, that she'd been there in the museum, in some old European museum, for hundreds and hundreds of years and she was just left there until her arms fell off, and she didn't have any legs. And she was just all by herself and so lonely, in the dark, and the museum would open, close, open, close, and she's just in there. And then there were those two pillars and she started to think, "Man, if I only had some arms I could make a drawing..."

SB: So did you like once and a while doing drawings with someone else?

SA: I did.

SB: Was it hard, a little bit confusing, funny?

SA: No. Confusing and excellent!

SB: That's kind of true. It was the same when I saw yours. I was like, Wow, what should I do? For me I wanted to make sure that whatever I did was good enough to honour your drawing, because you did a beautiful drawing and I didn't want to wreck it, and it's hard because you can't always control your art. Some things come out good and some others come out not so good. So you try your best. But it also was a really fun game. It was a nice way to hang out with you, just through making drawings. And I think in the end they came out really beautiful. So thank you for trusting me with your drawings.

SA: Thank you.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Shary Boyle and Shuvinai Ashoona on Their Collaboration

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
I first saw Shuvinai Ashoona's drawings when I went to the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery at the University of Toronto in 2009 to install my own beside them. Nancy Campbell had curated us together, the first of the series of two-person exhibitions she presented at the JMBG, pairing northern and southern artists.

# data[].attributes.body
LGBTQ artists in a variety of fields.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
So much more than 'the only lesbian in Canada'

Five years before homosexuality was ostensibly decriminalized in Canada, when same-sex sexual activity was still punishable by a multi-year prison sentence, Jane Rule published Desert of the Heart. It was a landmark of lesbian literature that was groundbreaking for its portrayal of a lesbian romance that was - boldly and unprecedentedly - positive. Rule received an influx of fan mail from women across the globe who had never had the privilege of reading a book they believed truly captured their experience, and the novel, which follows a woman seeking a divorce in Nevada who falls for a younger casino worker, was adapted into the acclaimed 1985 movie Desert Hearts. "I became, for the media, the only lesbian in Canada," said Rule, who used the newfound attention to become an advocate for LGBT rights in Canada - regularly contributing a column, essays and reviews to The Body Politic, and living openly with her partner, Helen Sonthoff, for more than 45 years until Sonthoff's death in 2000. Throughout her career, Rule published several novels and short stories, as well as a volume of criticism entitled Lesbian Images, and was the subject of the 1995 documentary Fiction and Other Truths: A Film About Jane Rule.

Lynne Fernie, filmmaker and film festival programmer:

Brilliant conversation, a fabulous sense of humour, a love of scotch and her profound belief in human rights made Jane Rule a delight to know. She is one of the brightest stars in our Canadian firmament.

Playfully and radically queering the Canadian landscape

Half-Cree, two-spirit artist Kent Monkman, who is a member of the Fisher River band in northern Manitoba, often channels his subversive view of history through the trickster lens of his campy, gender-bending alter ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle. And no one else could have celebrated Canada 150 quite like Monkman and Miss Chief. In his exhibit Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience, the artist depicts moments in Canadian history in a way that balances bite with humour, often placing Miss Chief directly into the scenes; the painting The Daddies, for instance, sees her nude atop a Hudson's Bay point blanket as the Fathers of Confederation look on in awe. The sublime images that grace Monkman's canvases draw on the sweeping vistas of George Catlin and Paul Kane - painters who commonly documented Indigenous life - while upsetting the binaries of colonial settler and colonized subject, straight and queer, fact and fantasy. The painter makes public appearances as Miss Chief from time to time, and his work has traveled the world, always offering a playful, radical and undeniably queer reimagination of the Canadian landscape.

Pushing Québécois theatre's boundaries since the 1960s

While Michel Tremblay's output draws directly from his upbringing in the then-working-class Plateau neighbourhood of Montreal, his hilarious and heartfelt plays have resonated with audiences across Canada. As an adolescent, Tremblay found himself a Québécois in a predominantly Anglo country and a gay teen in a largely intolerant society. The budding playwright began to write scripts as a way of probing that sexual and cultural identity, which led the way to his breakthrough work Les Belle-sœurs - a show about a clan of Montreal housewives who get together to paste trading stamps into booklets - in 1968. Another of Tremblay's standout (if later controversial) works is Hosanna, which portrays the complicated relationship between the titular character - described as a "cheap transvestite, touching and sad, exasperating in her self-exaltation" - and her biker boyfriend one Halloween night. Tremblay's plays are considered revolutionary for incorporating Quebec joual into mainstream theatre - and he did much the same thing with queer characters.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
CBC Arts presents Super Queeroes: Celebrating Canada's LGBTQ pioneers

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Five years before homosexuality was ostensibly decriminalized in Canada, when same-sex sexual activity was still punishable by a multi-year prison sentence, Jane Rule published Desert of the Heart. It was a landmark of lesbian literature that was groundbreaking for its portrayal of a lesbian romance that was - boldly and unprecedentedly - positive.

# data[].attributes.body
There's nothing like art!

# data[].attributes.body
A resource guide for bringing Canadian Indigenous culture into the classroom.

# data[].attributes.headline
How Jean-Michel Basquiat Turned Art History on Its Head

# data[].attributes.subject
How Jean-Michel Basquiat Turned Art History on Its Head

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How Jean-Michel Basquiat Turned Art History on Its Head

# data[].attributes.body
B&W Illustrations

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Autobiographical and dreamlike, Shantell Martin bridges the fine art and commercial world, as well as the objects, places and conversations of the everyday experience.

# data[].attributes.body
From Essence Magazine

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Queer individuals are the heartbeat of the arts community. Since the beginning of time, LGBTQ men and women and non-gender conforming artists have held space for unpopular sentiments, magical possibilities and powerful truths on stages, screens and canvases.

Painters, videographers, photographers, collage makers, and other artists help us see ourselves and one another. The work of these creators is worthy of attention and consideration year-round, and platforms like Black Trans Femmes in the Arts, ISE-DA, and the Queer Biennial are working to ensure that happens.

As we mark the beginning of Pride Month today, we celebrate these Black contemporary artists and the impact their creations have had on increasing queer visibility and shaping our understanding of identity and sexuality. Here are 16 LGBTQ visual artists you should know.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Queer individuals are the heartbeat of the arts community. Since the beginning of time, LGBTQ men and women and non-gender conforming artists have held space for unpopular sentiments, magical possibilities and powerful truths on stages, screens and canvases. Painters, videographers, photographers, collage makers, and other artists help us see ourselves and one another.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Mar 25-Aug 8, 2021 For more than two decades, Julie Mehretu (b. 1970, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) has been engaged in a deep exploration of painting. She creates new forms and finds unexpected resonances by drawing from the histories of art and human civilization-from Babylonian stelae to architectural sketches, from European history painting to the sites and symbols of African liberation movements.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"I do everything with my phone. This is my studio."

With a career spanning four decades, Vancouver interdisciplinary artist Paul Wong has been on the leading edge of bringing technology into his art practice and he's unabashed about his embrace of the new. "I proudly and loudly say [my phone] is where I do most of my work."

Even though we've now been in this digital world for a while, Wong feels that we're still relatively speaking just on the edge of this new way of existing and making art. "We're in the primordial period of digital culture," he says. "The shift from archaic analog in the last ten years is fairly revolutionary."

Watch the video:

"I think it's still very much an experimental phase of how we can see the world, feel the world, create in that world and share in that world."

Wong doesn't just celebrate the technology for itself, however. It's about what's made or done with it. "There's always going to be new technology. Picking up a piece of technology and learning how to use it doesn't make you an artist. It's doing what art should do, which is taking it to another kind of place."

Check out more of Paul Wong's work below:

Art Minute is a CBC Arts series taking you inside the minds of Canadian artists to hear what makes them tick and the ideas behind their work.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Digital artist Paul Wong unabashedly uses his phone as his studio | CBC Arts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"I do everything with my phone. This is my studio." With a career spanning four decades, Vancouver interdisciplinary artist Paul Wong has been on the leading edge of bringing technology into his art practice and he's unabashed about his embrace of the new.

# data[].attributes.body
Episode of In the Making featuring two-spirit artist Adrian Stinson of the Siksika (Blackfoot) Nation.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This is a new language in artistry. It is the pushing of photography beyond the boundaries of the conventional. Each of Joan's new works originates from a photo, she recognized anything photograph can be pushed further. An innovative way of layering, blending and applying various effects and filters, thus allowing her to create limited edition works that are printed on Fine Art canvas. Joan's newest collection was inspired while on safari in Africa.

This new and innovative technique allows the ability to capture and emit, bold, beautiful and vibrant colours. It interprets and conveys her vision and gives her the freedom to create works that intrigue and allows room for the viewer's interpretation.

All works are printed on gallery style

Small Works - Polished Gems

A delightful collection of "Acrylic Pours" on 8"x10"

Canvas boards wired and ready to hang.

You will easily fall in love with these colourful little paintings

Visit this gallery sometime...

www.joanbutterfield.ca

It has been my aim from the onset of my career to produce art that would become a vehicle, aesthetically linking the past to the future. I strive to document and educate myself and others about my rich culture and heritage and have endeavored over the course of my journey to present an artistic, positive, presentation of the African Diaspora. -jb

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
JOAN BUTTERFIELD Artist Art Innovator Art Curator Art Collector

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This is a new language in artistry. It is the pushing of photography beyond the boundaries of the conventional. Each of Joan's new works originates from a photo, she recognized anything photograph can be pushed further. An innovative way of layering, blending and applying various effects and filters, thus allowing her to create limited edition works that are printed on Fine Art canvas.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, has an extensive collection of painter Edward Mitchell Bannister's work, mostly oil paintings depicting pastoral life. Although Bannister was born in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, he is largely recognized in the United States, where he lived much of his adult life, as a pioneer of Black American art. His painting Under The Oaks, now lost, earned him a major American art prize at the Centennial Exposition, held in Philadelphia in 1876. But he's been all but omitted from Canadian art history.

"I've been promoting Bannister since the 1980s because I became aware that he was a Maritime-born Canadian artist whom very few people knew about," says artist and curator David Woods.

Woods was 15 when he learned of Bannister by chance. Woods's family emigrated from Trinidad to Canada in 1972, settling in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. He remembers listening to WUNR, a radio station that came through the airwaves from Boston late at night-his only regular opportunity to hear Black music on the radio. One night they did a Black History Month segment on Bannister, which introduced Woods to the artist and his work.

As Woods got older, his fixation with Bannister continued, but he was confounded by the fact that few others seemed interested in the artist's historical importance. "The white art establishment knew nothing about him. And sadly, the Black folks didn't know much about him either. So, I was kind of a lone ranger in that field."

Woods, who in addition to being a curator is also a visual artist, poet, playwright, theatre director and cultural organizer, has devoted his career to artists and stories like this. He's perhaps most known for co-curating the 1998 exhibition "In This Place: Black Art in Nova Scotia" at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design's Anna Leonowens Gallery. It was a vital survey of art, dating as far back as 1886, from both urban and rural Black communities throughout Nova Scotia. By uncovering the histories of many Black Maritime artists, Woods created a sense of place, a way to teach emerging artists about the work of those who preceded them, whose legacies had largely gone undocumented and unpreserved.

This penchant for teaching makes sense: Woods's foray into art started in education. In 1981, after three years studying political science at Dalhousie University, he was offered a job running cultural youth programs with the Black United Front, a Nova Scotian Black advocacy organization founded in the mid-1960s. He agreed to do it for a year, thinking he would then go back to Dalhousie for law school. He never did. "I'd never had the opportunity to artistically express myself growing up in a family where the immigrant demand for lawyers and doctors was the preeminent thing. You couldn't have aspirations outside of the conventional," he recalls. "I moved out and soon discovered that my other ambitions had taken over. I was always involved in the arts-writing and painting and all those things-but I never elevated it as central."

The program was intended to teach Black children adopted into white families about their cultural heritage. Woods insisted the eligibility criteria be broadened to include any Black students who wanted to participate. "I basically said, 'I don't think anybody's being taught their culture properly. These kinds of superficial things, where you have a workshop here and there sporadically, don't work.' If I was going to do anything, I wanted it attached to the school system."

Black students from all over Halifax and Dartmouth flocked to the program, which taught cultural identity through poetry, plays, painting, history lessons and quizzes. The program ended after the first year. But the students refused to let it go, and they started their own organization, the Cultural Awareness Youth Group (CAYG). Woods led the organization and curriculum until 1989.

Pamela Edmonds, who is now senior curator at the McMaster Museum of Art in Hamilton, was a member of the CAYG while she attended Prince Andrew High School in Dartmouth. She says she was one of few Black students at her school, which made the CAYG a kind of haven: "It created a sense of community around artistically inclined Black students. It gave me an inkling that this was actually something I could work towards, being an artist or being in an artistic field. [Woods] was really a mentor to a lot of artists, then and beyond."

The students wrote and acted in their own plays, created artwork and participated in inter-school quiz competitions. Edmonds refers to the experience as "knowledge-building about Black identity." One of these plays is the subject of Sylvia D. Hamilton's 1992 documentary Speak It! From the Heart of Black Nova Scotia, which focuses on a group of students as they explore their Blackness through the CAYG and perform in Woods's production Black Journey. Like Woods's work, Hamilton's arsenal of acclaimed documentaries and writing, centred on place-making and reclamation, is a crucial document of Nova Scotian history and artistic practice.

Woods became versed in Black Nova Scotian history because he felt an obligation to teach more than just the few regurgitated facts about Black Loyalists that students usually learned during Black History Month. His first curatorial project was a photography exhibition on the Black history of Halifax's North End neighbourhood. Following the launch of Voices Black Theatre Ensemble, in 1990-where he honed his playwriting skills and wrote radio dramas for the CBC-Woods also helped found the Black Artists Network of Nova Scotia in the early 1990s, getting deeper into cultural organizing and advocacy.

Around the same time that Woods's projects began to probe the province's histories, events in the region highlighted the urgency of his work. The social landscape of Halifax had been rocked by the 1989 Cole Harbour District High School brawls, which brought the racial tensions between the city's white and Black communities to a head. A violent fight broke out at the school in January 1989 between students from the predominantly white Eastern Passage and Cow Bay regions, and the predominantly Black regions of North Preston, East Preston and Cherry Brook. A CBC article reporting the incident details someone getting "smashed in the face" and having "their face split open." In another CBC article published 30 years later, Corey Beals, who was a student at Cole Harbour at the time, described how the fight led to the province reconsidering its response to anti-Black racism and the experiences of Black students, who felt underrepresented. Woods was part of a race-relations committee created by the local school board, one of many such committees that emerged in the wake of the violence.

In 1992, an exhibition at the Dalhousie Art Gallery featuring six works from Black American artist Carrie Mae Weems's Ain't Jokin' series (1987-88) revealed the chasm between Halifax's Black community and the art establishment. Weems's attempts to force audiences to confront their own racism-through the satirical use of racist jokes and tropes about Black people, such as equating them to apes-were interpreted by members of Halifax's Black community as insensitive. Black students at Dalhousie staged a sit-in at the gallery, demanding the works be removed. "There was not a good relationship between the arts community and the Black community [at that time]," says Edmonds. Representation of Black art had been historically lacking in the area's institutions, so a display of works that illustrated harmful stereotypes, even while critiquing those same stereotypes, left a sore feeling.

"In This Place," co-curated with Harold Pearse, was initially going to show work from current and former Black NSCAD students, but the first call for submissions received few responses. When Woods was brought on as a co-curator, he wanted to see if he could widen the exhibition's scope. "There was no route to search for art," he remembers, "because there had been no art shows in the institutional sense." Curating would have to be done very differently: "Black artists did not exhibit in galleries, so you couldn't just phone up galleries and make a request. I knew people in every Black community, so I just got in a car and drove. A month later, I showed up with 300 photographed pieces of art. And that's when we realized we had something."

"In This Place" opened on February 16, 1998, and included more than 100 works from 46 artists, many of which had never been exhibited before. Paintings, ceramics, handmade prints, quilts, wood carvings, woven baskets and collages-it was a true myriad of mediums. The exhibition included work by student, self-taught and professional artists: Justin Augustine's paintings; Jim Shirley's monotypes; Ruth Johnson's handprinted greeting cards; contributions from mixed-media artist Crystal Clements; and work by craft artist Audrey Dear Hesson, the first Black graduate of NSCAD. Woods's poem Abode (1996), from which the exhibition gets its title, was mounted on Plexiglas in the centre of the gallery. He used the poem as a guide to tie the multidisciplinary works together, since he started looking for work before any curatorial aim was determined. Its last stanza speaks to the agency Black artists have over their own narratives:

So that here in this place-
Even amidst oppression,
When both they and I look-
My soul will still be housed in an abode of beauty,
And its riches will still be mine.

Woods emphasizes that "In This Place" presented work that Black people knew had been happening; it was largely the white art world that was unaware of its history. In a way, Woods worked like an archivist, documenting these pieces before they could be lost to memory. Meril Rasmussen's 1998 thesis essay is a thorough firsthand account of the history of the exhibition, an essential source unveiling the impact of "In This Place." In it, Rasmussen writes that "Powerful legacies, both individual and collective, were unveiled, forever changing the expectations of Black artists in this province."

The exhibition toured Nova Scotia, starting in Halifax and then travelling to Shelburne, Sydney and New Glasgow. It received mostly positive reviews, but not everyone lauded the collection. Award-winning poet George Elliott Clarke, who grew up in Halifax and became a critical voice in literature chronicling the lives of Black Nova Scotians, reviewed the show for Mix, a now-defunct national art magazine. "Given the random fashion in which this treasure trove has been assembled," he wrote, "it lacks any sense of period or even geographic consistency."

Still, it was an opportunity for engagement and honest discourse about Black Nova Scotian art in the public sphere. "Weymouth Falls is [an example of] a particularly talented community, but nobody ever showed their art anywhere. If you're doing wood carving in the back of Weymouth Falls, you don't consider [your work] the art that goes into galleries. It's not from any deficiency of anything. If nobody has ever approached you and treated your work as art, you don't automatically get this idea that it should be shown in galleries," says Woods.

"In This Place" came during "a little renaissance of Black exhibitions" in the 1990s, recalls Edmonds, who organized a few exhibitions with Sister Visions, a collective of Black women artists, in the years following. This renaissance was marked by artists such as Buseje Bailey, who was in residence at the Centre for Art Tapes and exhibited frequently in Nova Scotia, and work by Harold Cromwell, Ralph Cromwell and Ada Cromwell on display at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia and MSVU Art Gallery. It seemed like an opportune time.

In 2006 Woods was hired by Art Gallery of Nova Scotia director Jeffrey Spalding to be associate curator of African Canadian art there. He curated two exhibitions ("Visions in African Nova Scotian Art" and "The Soul Speaks"), started developing a permanent collection of African Canadian art (even acquiring a Bannister painting for the collection) and fundraised for more exhibitions. It was a short-lived stint; Woods was let go just a few weeks after Spalding left the gallery, in 2007.

According to Woods, he was working on creating structural change from within the institution, but his brief time there allowed for little progress: "There's a difference between structured commitments versus tokenism. Tokenism is easy. You just hire a person for a brief period of time or you book a show and then brag about it for the next 20 years." Since then Woods has mostly worked independently. He's tenacious and uninterested in depending on the whims of institutions. "After the AGNS, I learned, 'Brother, if they could look at all that wealth [of Black creativity] and still treat it like that,'" he says, "I ain't going to burn myself out for other folk. I believe in what I can do but I also don't believe I can be some kind of messiah figure."

Woods is in the early stages of writing a book exploring the history of Black art in Nova Scotia. He's hoping it will spawn other work and research into Black art histories across the country. Other than the recent Towards an African Canadian Art History (2018), a collection of essays edited by Charmaine A. Nelson, there is little in the way of a comprehensive literature. The absence makes the risk of ahistoricism more immediate: contemporary academics and curators have few places to look.

Woods's concern is that there are also so few people who can speak to these histories. "The kids don't stay in these communities. The old people get old. The churches rot. I'm not elevating these stories as anything more than what they are. It's just that I understand these places. I travel these places. I talk to these people. And it would be great to just represent their stories before they completely expire."

In early 2022, an expanded version of an exhibition of quilts Woods curated (and contributed work to) in 2012, "The Secret Codes," will be going on a national tour, starting at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown. The quilts capture community history and are a distinguished vehicle for storytelling. The exhibition title refers to how quilts were used to guide enslaved peoples fleeing to freedom via the Underground Railroad. There has yet to be a major exhibition of Edward Mitchell Bannister's work in Canada, but Woods is working toward borrowing paintings from the Smithsonian to finally give the artist the star treatment in his home province. Slated for early 2023 at the Owens Art Gallery at Mount Allison University, Bannister's homecoming will happen more than 50 years after Woods's fateful late-night radio discovery. National recognition is a long time coming for them both.

This is an article from our Fall 2020 issue, "Chroma."

Kelsey Adams

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, has an extensive collection of painter Edward Mitchell Bannister's work, mostly oil paintings depicting pastoral life. Although Bannister was born in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, he is largely recognized in the United States, where he lived much of his adult life, as a pioneer of Black American art.

# data[].attributes.headline
Telari-o-lin, Huron Chief and Painter - Zacharie Vincent

# data[].attributes.subject
Telari-o-lin, Huron Chief and Painter - Zacharie Vincent

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Zacharie Vincent

(Wendake, Quebec, 1815 - Québec City 1886)
Telari-o-lin, chef huron et peintre [Telari-o-lin, Huron Chief and Painter] about 1875-1880
Oil and graphite on paper

72.8 x 51.3 cm

Gift of succession H. H. Lyman, 1915

© Château Ramezay - Historic Site and Museum of Montréal, 1998.1098

Add to favourites

The self-portrait Telari-o-lin, chef huron et peintre [ Telari-o-lin, Huron Chief and Painter] expresses a stylistic freedom and a vigorous use of colour that contrast with the classic landscapes and portraits of the period. Here, Zacharie Vincent borrows not only Western painting techniques but decorations of the dominant culture, like the medal depicting Queen Victoria. At the same time, though, he proudly wears traditional clothing and ornaments. In this way, Vincent upends the conventions employed by artists such as Paul Kane in Romantic representations of Indigenous peoples, while showing the adaptability and cultural métissage of the Huron Nation.

Zacharie Vincent painted quite a few self-portraits. He often depicted himself in a frontal pose, wearing a headdress bedecked with ostrich plumes and a Maltese cross resembling the heraldic badge of the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII. Here the artist pictures himself for posterity in full regalia, a chief equal to the prince. Vincent's oeuvre of more than 600 works has gradually found its place in the history of Canadian art. However, much remains to be done to ensure the same for the work of other Aboriginal artists and to nuance the romantic image perpetuated by artists of the time working in the European tradition.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
1878 - Telari-o-lin, Huron Chief and Painter by Zacharie Vincent | 150 years 150 works

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Zacharie Vincent (Wendake, Quebec, 1815 - Québec City 1886) Telari-o-lin, chef huron et peintre [Telari-o-lin, Huron Chief and Painter] about 1875-1880 Oil and graphite on paper 72.8 x 51.3 cm Gift of succession H. H.

# data[].attributes.headline
Private Roy, Canadian Women’s Army Corps - Molly Lamb Bobak

# data[].attributes.subject
Private Roy, Canadian Women’s Army Corps - Molly Lamb Bobak

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Embarkation Leave is a page from Molly Lamb Bobak's illustrated diary, titled W110278 after her service number. Lamb Bobak began recording the events of her military life soon after joining the Canadian Women's Army Corps, in 1942. The diary is laid out like a daily newspaper. But instead of reporting on national and international developments in World War II, Lamb Bobak humorously recounts her adventures as a soldier kept behind the front. She offers a surprising perspective on a little-known aspect of World War II: the role played by women in the armed conflict.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
1946 - Private Roy, Canadian Women's Army Corps by Molly Lamb Bobak | 150 years 150 works

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Embarkation Leave is a page from Molly Lamb Bobak's illustrated diary, titled W110278 after her service number. Lamb Bobak began recording the events of her military life soon after joining the Canadian Women's Army Corps, in 1942. The diary is laid out like a daily newspaper.

# data[].attributes.body
1876 - Indian Act by Nadia Myre | 150 years 150 works

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Nadia Myre

(Montréal 1974)
Indian Act (détail) [Loi sur les Indiens] 2002
Tissu, papier imprimé, perles, fil, ruban adhésif et aiguille

46 x 38,7 x 5,5 cm

Acheté pour la collection Prêt d'œuvres d'art en 2005, transféré à la collection permanente du Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec

Collection du Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, 2008.201

© Nadia Myre / CARCC (2018). Photo : MNBAQ, Idra Labrie

Add to favourites

The 1876 Indian Act, which made Indigenous people wards of the Crown, remains a blot on Canadian history. Close to 125 years later, Nadia Myre denounced the discriminatory and exclusionary nature of this law with Indian Act. To subvert and re-appropriate the legislative text, she used the traditional technique of beading. White beads replace the words on the first 56 pages of the Act, rendering it null and void. Created with the assistance of 200 volunteers, the work exposes and decries a colonial policy still partially in effect today.

Although Indian Act dates to 2000-2002, it fittingly represents 1876 here. This work underlines the significance of the Act in the production of Nadia Myre, a multidisciplinary artist of Algonquin heritage who claimed and obtained Indian Status in 1997. While the concepts of identity quest and cultural hybridity recur in many of her works, her primary aim is to take back and retell Canada's history by exposing the country's colonial narrative. Language and symbols as communication tools are important in Myre's rewriting, and she freely mixes traditional ancestral crafts, like beading, with official means of communication, like legislative text.

The pages of the work are held in the collections of several institutions, including the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec.
MUSÉE NATIONAL DES BEAUX-ARTS DU QUÉBEC
179 Grande Allée West
Québec (Quebec), G1R 2H1
418 643-2150
mnbaq.org "Google Maps "

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
1876 - Indian Act by Nadia Myre | 150 years 150 works

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Nadia Myre (Montréal 1974) Indian Act (détail) [Loi sur les Indiens] 2002 Tissu, papier imprimé, perles, fil, ruban adhésif et aiguille 46 x 38,7 x 5,5 cm Acheté pour la collection Prêt d'œuvres d'art en 2005, transféré à la collection permanente du Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec Collection du Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, 2008.201 © Nadia Myre / CARCC (2018).

# data[].attributes.headline
150 Years - 150 Works: Canadian Art as Historical Act

# data[].attributes.subject
150 Years - 150 Works: Canadian Art as Historical Act

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The virtual exhibition 150 Years | 150 Works: Canadian Art as Historical Act presents art as an integral part of Canada's social and political history.
It looks at Canada through works that have in some way shaped or changed the country's history over the past century and a half.

Most but not all of the works in this panorama are presented according to their year of production: here and there, diverging from chronological order serves to recast historical relationships and challenge traditional perceptions.

Drawn from the collections of major museums, university galleries and private collections, the exhibited works include both well-known icons and little-known surprises. Brief texts discuss each one and interpret the context in which it was made. Supplemental descriptions and images provide a deeper understanding in some cases.
A Few Ways to Explore the Exhibition
You can visit the exhibition by following a timeline of Canadian history or by randomly browsing a of images that often leads to unexpected juxtapositions.

You can also follow the threads suggested by four categories: representing history, making history, expanding history and reopening history.

Being open-ended, these categories foster exploration of and reflection on Canadian art as historical act.

Use this interactive exhibition to establish your own take on history by selecting works that pique your interest or your curiosity. Then reshape history from your own perspective.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The virtual exhibition 150 Years | 150 Works: Canadian Art as Historical Act presents art as an integral part of Canada's social and political history. It looks at Canada through works that have in some way shaped or changed the country's history over the past century and a half.

# data[].attributes.headline
Black Art Matters - 14 Black Canadian Artists to Know

# data[].attributes.subject
Black Art Matters - 14 Black Canadian Artists to Know

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Art Canada Institute - Institut de l'art canadien

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Black Art Matters

Edith Hester Macdonald-Brown, Untitled, 1906
Oil on canvas, 49.3 x 74.9 cm, collection of Mrs. Geraldine Parker. Photo credit: Joey Yazer

Edith Hester Macdonald-Brown (1880-1956) is believed to be the first recorded Black female painter in the history of Canadian art. This scene of cows in a hilly locale is one of only four existing works by the artist. After studying art in Montreal, Macdonald-Brown returned to her hometown Africville, a thriving village established by Black settlers in Nova Scotia that was wrongly razed by the city of Halifax in the 1960s in the name of industrialization. This under-documented work bears witness to the little-known existence of African-Canadian art production at the turn of the twentieth century. As Nova Scotia artist, writer, and curator David Woods states, "people tended to ignore that there were artists creating masterpieces equal to the work of anyone else at that time."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Black Art Matters: Fourteen Canadian Artists to Know

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This online exhibition celebrates the works of fourteen Black Canadian artists-historical and contemporary-to help change the conversation and build a multi-vocal narrative. In addition to this list there are many more names to know-they are essential to redefining how we understand and appreciate this country's art.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Exhibition

Artist's Statement: My paintings depict images of young black persons transfixed in an otherworldly space. The figures occupy the foreground against what, at first glance, appears to be an ambiguous background. However, they are not realistic portraits of actual individuals. Rather, they are composites, placed in scenes which frame and dominate my childhood memories of my homeland, the Caribbean island of Dominica. By placing the figures against warm, lightly coloured and sharply contrasted architecture, further memories of a tropical climate are invoked.

The stoic and intentional gestures of the figures entice viewers to form their own conclusions as to the significance of the painting. There is an added invitation for the viewer to take the place of the figures and undergo their experiences. Some of these paintings are, in fact, documentations of emotional connections to places I have visited, which have had a significant influence on how I perceive myself. Other paintings in this series are explorations of my own identity as a black person. As a parallel comparison with my homeland and as representation of my immigration to Canada at an early age, some of the paintings include familiar locations in Nova Scotia, such as Preston, Seaview Park (once the site of Africville) and Gottingen Street in the North End of Halifax.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Exhibition Artist's Statement: My paintings depict images of young black persons transfixed in an otherworldly space. The figures occupy the foreground against what, at first glance, appears to be an ambiguous background. However, they are not realistic portraits of actual individuals.

# data[].attributes.headline
5 Black Canadian artists whose names should be known alongside the Group of Seven | CBC Arts

# data[].attributes.subject
5 Black Canadian artists whose names should be known alongside the Group of Seven | CBC Arts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
5 Black Canadian artists whose names should be known alongside the Group of Seven | CBC Arts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Artists appearing in Here We Are Here, the ROM’s show about Black Canadian contemporary art, share their picks.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
About

This website was created for the Kerry James Marshall: Mastry exhibition to not only provide insight into the works contained within the exhibition but also to serve as a scholarly resource. It captures knowledge created in the research process for the publication and the exhibition that would otherwise be inaccessible.

The site is designed into four sections, a chronology, works in detail, essays, and the exhibition itself. The chronology, The History of the World According to Kerry James Marshall, gathers events from 1425 to the present that include links to various website resources for further information and are illustrated by relevant Marshall paintings to the right; Works in Detail highlights the extensive details of his paintings annotated with text, video, and music; Essays includes selected essays from the exhibition catalogue; Finally, About the Exhibition includes the introductory wall text, the checklist, information about the catalogue and the documentary video that features the artist explaining his project to rewrite art history.

View Website

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This website was created for the Kerry James Marshall: Mastry exhibition to not only provide insight into the works contained within the exhibition but also to serve as a scholarly resource. It captures knowledge created in the research process for the publication and the exhibition that would otherwise be inaccessible.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Carl Ray – Artist Biography

Carl Ray, a self-taught artist, was born in 1943 on the Sandy Lake First Nation reserve in Northern Ontario and was known in his Cree community as Tall Straight Poplar (he was 6'4" tall). Ray left his residential school at 15, following the death of his father. Upon his departure from school, he hunted and trapped, however this traditional way of life did not suit him and he had to quit.

Although he had always shown a proficiency in art, he was hesitant to pursue a career in visual art due to the taboo of painting the sacred stories and beliefs of his people. His reluctance was further strengthened by the reprimands he received from his elders anytime he picked up brush of paint. In the mid 1960s, Norval Morrisseau had successfully broken the taboos that had previously restricted Ray from pursuing his artistic abilities. Ray was now able to confidently follow his passions and created outstanding images of wildlife, northern scenic landscapes and "legend paintings". He would later apprentice under Morrisseau.

Ray would later teach art at numerous schools in northern communities, including Kirkland Lake, Timmins, Wawa, Manitoulin Island, Sudbury, North Bay, Bracebridge, and Oshawa. He also completed many large murals and by the mid 1970s, as a member of the Professional Native Indian Artists Incorporation (commonly known as the Indian Group of Seven), Ray enjoyed the acclaim and success of the group and has his works collected by high profile art collectors and public institutions like the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ontario.

Carl Ray died in 1978 from a stab wound he sustained during a fight in Sioux Lookout.

Fellow artist Alex Janvier said of Ray: "Carl Ray was the guy who could laugh, make fun of you, throw a joke on you and he'd laugh his head off"
- The Life and Work of the Woodland Artists - Interview with Alex Janvier, 2003.

Note: indicates the piece has been sold.

Daphne Odjig, Canadian Indigenous Artist and Icon Dies at 97. Click here for more details.

Odjig is frequently referred to as the "Grandmother of Indigenous Art." She has been the recipient of many awards, honours and recognitions for her works, to name a few: The Order of Canada, the Governor General's Award, and eight Honorary Doctorates. Her works have been shown in the National Gallery of Canada, The McMichael Canadian Art Collection, the Canadian Museum of Civilization and the Art Gallery of Ontario.

She established the first native-run fine art print house in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1971. Known as 'Odjig Indian Prints,' this print house was so successful that it evolved into an Indigenous gallery space in 1974, called the New Warehouse Gallery, run by Odjig and her husband, Chester Beavon. She was also a founding member of the Indian Group of Seven. This artistic group's purpose was to promote Contemporary Indigenous art and artists.

Alex Janvier's major retrospective, "Alex Janvier: Modern Indigenous Master" is now open at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ontario until January 21st, 2018. Afterwards, it will travel to the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton and the Glenbow Museum in Calgary.
This exhibition was recently on display at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa and the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina. Alex Janvier is one of Canada's most acclaimed contemporary artists. His career of sixty-five years has yielded thousands of paintings, and more than twenty-five murals and public commissions. (Photo credit: Kim Griffiths)

Gallery Gevik congratulates renowned Canadian and International abstract painter, Rita Letendre, on her first major museum retrospective exhibition outside of Québec. Rita Letendre: Fire and Light is now open until September 17, 2017 at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

This exhibition, which covers Letendre's career from the 1960's to 2000's, is co-curated by Wanda Nanibush and Georgiana Uhlyarik. The retrospective features nearly forty large-scale paintings drawn from major national public and private collections.

Letendre was widely exhibited with the artistic groups, Les Automatistes and Les Plasticiens. She has received the Governor General's Award in Visual Arts, the Prix Paul-Émile Borduas, and the Orders of Canada, Ontario and Québec. Click here for more details.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Carl Ray :: Woodland Indian Art :: Gallery Phillip

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Carl Ray, a self-taught artist, was born in 1943 on the Sandy Lake First Nation reserve in Northern Ontario and was known in his Cree community as Tall Straight Poplar (he was 6'4" tall). Ray left his residential school at 15, following the death of his father.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Medicine Man In The Shaking Tent by Daphne Odjig | Image Source: McMicheal Canadian Art Collection
Jackson Beardy (Cree), Eddy Cobiness (Ojibway), Alex Janvier (Dene, Saulteaux), Norval Morrisseau (Ojibway), Daphne Odjig (Potawatomi, Odawa), Carl Ray (Cree) and Joseph Sanchez (Pueblo, Spanish, German). These are the Indigenous visual artists that make up the historical Professional Native Indian Artists Incorporation (PNIAI) and who are now recognized as The Indigenous Group of Seven.

Michelle Lavallee (Ojibway) has curated 7: Professional Native Indian Artists Inc to honor the work that this trailblazing group has accomplished, which is currently on display at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, ON until September 7, 2015. The exhibit then will be displayed at the Art Gallery of Windsor from October 2, 2015 to January 17, 2016; and the Art Gallery of Alberta from March 4, 2016 to June 5, 2016. The focus of the exhibit is to exemplify the diversity and range of each artist's work produced in the 70's. Although some members of the group were part of the "Woodland" style movement, Lavallee points out that, "the artists who did adhere to the style were still very unique in what they did."

The Group informally got together in the early 1970's, meeting in Beardy's or Odjig's studio where they often shared their frustrations with the prejudice they faced within the Canadian art establishment while also discussing art and critiquing each other's works. In 1974 they formally incorporated as a group to fight for the inclusion of Aboriginal artists in Canadian mainstream galleries and museums.

It took seven years for Lavallee to research, collect and develop the exhibition that features 100 pieces at McMichael alone. Lavallee was inspired to curate this exhibit as an artist concerned about what was being taught in relation to the history of First Nations and First Nation artistic production. "The exhibit is an extremely important part of Canadian history," she says, "it's bringing long over due attention back to this group and the important and significant impact they had on the history of Indigenous art in Canada." MUSKRAT Magazine presents The Indigenous Group of Seven:
1. Jackson Beardy (1944-1984)
Born on the Garden Hill Reserve (Island Lake, Manitoba) he was a residential school survivor and also studied at the Winnipeg Vocational School and the University of Manitoba. Beardy's art can be described as "flat areas of warm colors and curving ribbons of paint." His illustrations were published in John Morgan's book, When the Morning Stars Sang Together and also designed the cover art for Leonard Peterson's, Almighty Voice and Basil Johnston's, Ojibway Heritage.
2. Eddy Cobiness (1933-1996)
Cobiness was born in Warroad, Minnesota and raised on Buffalo Point Reserve, Manitoba. He served in the United States Army where he developed his artistic skills during his leisure time. His work evolved from realistic scenes to more abstract. Cobiness' use of "gentle flowing lines helped define contemporary Native Canadian art," which were inspired by fellow artist Benjamin Chee Chee. His art has been collected by prominent figures such as former Prime Minister, Jean Chretién and Queen Elizabeth II. Cobiness also published his illustrations in two books: Alphonse Has an Accident and Tuktoyaktuk 2-3.
3. Alex Janvier (b. 1935)
Born in Cold Lake First Nations, Alberta, Janvier was sent to Blue Quills Residential School at the age of eight where he was encouraged by the principal to pursue his artistic side. Later, he received his Fine Arts Diploma with Honours from the Alberta College of Art in Calgary. His masterpieces are described as an, "eloquent blend of both abstract and representational images with bright, often symbolic colours." Janvier considers, Morning Star, an abstract mural on the dome of the Museum of History in Hull QC, as his major career highlight.
4. Norval Morrisseau (1932-2007)
Raised on the Sand Point Reserve near Lake Nipigon, Morrisseau is a self-taught artist who founded the Woodland School of Art. His first solo exhibition at the Pollock Gallery in Toronto, 1962 was met with huge success and the sell out of his paintings. Morrisseau's artistic career is described as an unstoppable "progression from simple graphic narrative to rich harmonic structures within structures [which] has given the world a breathtaking libretto of Ojibwa legends and sacred imagery, within unsurpassed orchestrations of colour." He wrote and illustrated Legends of My People, The Great Ojibway and co-authored Norval Morrisseau: Travels to the House of Invention.
5. Daphne Odjig (b. 1919)
Odjig was born on Wikwemikong on Manitoulin Island. She was admitted to the British Columbia Federation of Artists in 1963 and in 1970 she established Odjig Indian Prints of Canada Limited in Winnipeg. Odjig has been the recipient of several awards and honours, including an Eagle Feather on behalf of the Wikwemikong Reserve in recognition of her artistic accomplishment, an honour previously reserved for men in 1978.
6. Carl Ray (1943-1978)
Ray was born on the Sandy Lake Reserve in Ontario. He was mostly self taught, but apprenticed under Norval Morrisseau. "His work stands out in the flat 2-dimensional Anishnaabe school for the implied third dimension he gave each creature and for the graceful curves and original compositions." Ray completed commissioned work alongside Norval Morrisseau for the Indians of Canada pavilion at Expo 67. He illustrated James Stevens' book, Sacred Legends of the Sandy Lake Cree, and the cover of Tom Marshall's book, The White City.
7. Joseph Sanchez (b. 1948)
Born in Trinidad, Colorado, Sanchez is an artist and a curator. He is the only non-Canadian artist of the PNIA. Sanchez served in the United States Marine Corps, before he moved to Canada and now resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 2010, Sanchez retired as Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (formerly the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum), where he had worked since 2002. In 2011, Sanchez was the Contemporary Curator of the exhibition Native American Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth University in Hanover, New Hampshire.
Curator Bio
Michelle LaVallee (Ojibway, Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation, Neyaashiinigmiing / Cape Croker) is a curator, artist, and educator. Since 2007, her curatorial work at the MacKenzie Art Gallery has explored the colonial relations that have shaped historical and contemporary culture through exhibitions including: 13 Coyotes: Edward Poitras (2012); To Be Reckoned With... (2010); Blow Your House In: Vernon Ah Kee(2009); Captured: Portraiture and the Permanent Collection; and Miss Chief: Shadow Catcher - Kent Monkman(2008). She is a recent participant in the Canadian Aboriginal Curators delegations sent to the 2011 Venice Biennale and the 2010 and 2008 Biennale of Sydney, and a recipient of the 2006 Canada Council for the Arts Assistance to Aboriginal Curators Grant for Residencies in the Visual Arts.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
THE INDIGENOUS GROUP OF SEVEN - MUSKRAT Magazine

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Medicine Man In The Shaking Tent by Daphne Odjig | Image Source: McMicheal Canadian Art Collection Jackson Beardy (Cree), Eddy Cobiness (Ojibway), Alex Janvier (Dene, Saulteaux), Norval Morrisseau (Ojibway), Daphne Odjig (Potawatomi, Odawa), Carl Ray (Cree) and Joseph Sanchez (Pueblo, Spanish, German). These are the Indigenous visual artists that make up the historical Professional Native ...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
-

Alex Janvier

CM, AOE, RCA, LLD

Alex Janvier, Denesuline, from the Cold Lake First Nations, Treaty 6 Territory, has been a professional artist for several decades. Janvier is renowned for his distinct curved lines and use of bright color combinations. His unique abstract style and his artistic ideas have blazed the trail for many First Nations and Canadian Artists. Janvier is multi-talented, creating Original Works of Art in many different mediums throughout his career. Numerous magnificent and distinct Janvier murals adorn public buildings across Canada. Read more...

error: All images, content and texts are property of Alex Janvier. Please contact us if you wish to use any images.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
CM, AOE, RCA, LLD Alex Janvier, Denesuline, from the Cold Lake First Nations, Treaty 6 Territory, has been a professional artist for several decades. Janvier is renowned for his distinct curved lines and use of bright color combinations. His unique abstract style and his artistic ideas have blazed the trail for many First Nations and Canadian Artists.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Eddy Cobiness was born in Warroad, Minnesota but was raised on the Buffalo Point Reserve in Eastern Manitoba. He signed all his works with his treaty number '47'. Cobiness was a member of the so-called Native Group of Seven, also known as The Woodlands Group of Seven which came together in 1972. The group included Norval Morrisseau, Daphne Odjig, Carl Ray (murdered in Sioux Lookout in 1978), Jackson Beardy (died of a heart attack in 1984 at the age of 40), Alex Janvier and Joe Sanchez.

After a career in the U.S. Army in the late '50's, where Eddy was a Golden Glove boxer, and a stint as a pulp-cutter and fisherman, he began to concentrate on painting. A treaty Ojibwa Indian, Cobiness had a large studio in Buffalo Point on the shore of Lake of the Woods, but was forced to move to Winnipeg in 1974 because of ill health.

Eddy was given the nickname "Doc" by the artistic community for his support and care of his fellow native artists. His art is in the private collection of Queen Elizabeth and Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien and actor Charlton Heston. Eddy died in Winnipeg, Manitoba on January 1, 1996 from complications due to diabetes. He was 62.

Cobiness was buried near his studio in Buffalo Point. He is survived by his wife Helen of 34 years and eight children.

Eddy Cobiness frequently painted stylized images of animals, and was known for being able to capture the essence of the various creatures or warriors with just a few deft strokes, a style that came to be known as "the flowing art of Eddy Cobiness."

"I have met and worked with many talented young artists, who have so much to contribute to the world of visual art. I hope, by setting a good example myself, that someday you will get to know them too."

- Eddy Cobiness

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Eddy Cobiness - Woodland Art | DaVic Gallery of Native Canadian Arts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Eddy Cobiness was born in Warroad, Minnesota but was raised on the Buffalo Point Reserve in Eastern Manitoba. He signed all his works with his treaty number '47'. Cobiness was a member of the so-called Native Group of Seven, also known as The Woodlands Group of Seven which came together in 1972.

# data[].attributes.body
Searchable website that provides artist and movement timelines.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Art Story: Visual Art Movements, Artists, Ideas, and Definitions

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Art Story is the History of Visual Art that is optimized for the web: we clearly and graphically overview and analyze classical and modern artists, movements, and ideas.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
>> Download this Classroom Resource
About the Subject

Michelle Obama

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama is a lawyer, writer, and the wife of the 44th president, Barack Obama. She was the first African American first lady of the United States. As an advocate for healthy families, service members and their families, higher education, and international adolescent girls' education, she has become a role model. Mrs. Obama remembers growing up on the South Side of Chicago and thinking "being smart is cooler than anything in the world." After earning degrees from Princeton University and Harvard Law School, she joined Sidley Austin LLP, where she met Barack Obama in 1989. Guided by the desire to improve her community, she left the firm in the mid-1990s to begin a career in public service. She directed community and external affairs for the University of Chicago Medical Center prior to moving to Washington in 2009. During her husband's two presidential campaigns, Mrs. Obama delivered poignant speeches that centered on her family's commitment to serving others and highlighted the importance of her role as a parent.

About the Artist

Amy Sherald

In 2016, Amy Sherald became the first woman to win the National Portrait Gallery's Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition with her painting Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance): https://portraitcompetition.si.edu/content/amy-sherald. Based in Baltimore, Maryland, Sherald focuses on African American cultural history and the representation of the African American body. She uses a grayscale to paint skin tones as a way of challenging the concept of color as race. This grayscale technique, also called grisaille, is connected to the artist's early personal experiences. Sherald, who was born in Columbus, Georgia, remembers looking at family photo albums as a child and getting to know her grandmother Jewel through a black-and-white photograph. She was captivated by her grandmother's beauty, self-possession, and confident, direct gaze in the photograph. When Sherald looked for painted portraits of people who looked like her in art history books in local libraries, she realized that her family's story was absent in the history of painted portraiture. She was also discouraged when she did not find people who looked like her in the public spaces of museums. Sherald's larger project of painting portraits of African Americans seeks to make up for this absence by addressing the history of representation. She has notably described her paintings as a "meditation on photography." Her subjects are often set in whimsical, nondescript settings with occasional surreal details that add a bit of satire. The dreamlike backgrounds create what the artist refers to as "the amorphous personal space of my own existence within the context of black identity and my search for ways to clarify and ground it."

About the Painting

Portrait unveiling

The portrait celebrates Michelle Obama, the former first lady of the United States and the wife of the 44th president, Barack Obama. In this elegant and enigmatic painting, she gazes directly out at the viewer, hand under her chin, inviting contemplation. Painted using the artist Amy Sherald's signature grayscale, Mrs. Obama's unnaturally colored skin asks us to consider both her race and her humanity. While the use of gray in lieu of more natural skin tones reduces the reference to her race, the blunt removal also draws attention to her skin color, highlighting her racial identity. The gray tones, in particular, reference nineteenth-century photographic traditions, wherein the emerging photographic medium allowed free African Americans to celebrate themselves and craft their own unique (and positive) identities. Whereas the grand portraiture traditions of painting and sculpture were largely out of reach, photography was an accessible medium. Instead of representing a particular time or place, Sherald strives to make Mrs. Obama timeless and therefore eternally relevant for viewers. Dominating the composition is Mrs. Obama's monumental dress. Designed by Michelle Smith, for her label Milly, and selected for the portrait by Mrs. Obama, Sherald, and Mrs. Obama's stylist, the dress is symbolic, referencing the former first lady's modernity and approachability. While the dress was originally designed by Smith with modern art, such as Pop and Op art, in mind, Sherald recognized its visual affinities with the quilts of Gee's Bend, Alabama. The quilts of Gee's Bend, a remote black community of the descendants of former slaves, are bold and improvisational, and reference the independence and resourcefulness of the African American experience.

Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition

Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance)

Amy Sherald received first prize in the 2016 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition for an oil on canvas titled Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance). Every three years, the National Portrait Gallery invites artists who are at least eighteen years old to submit their work to the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. The competition welcomes all media, including painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, textiles, video, performance, and digital or time-based media. The competition's focus is on broadening the definition of portraiture and highlighting the genre's relevance in contemporary art. Artists are encouraged to think about portraiture's potential to engage with the social and political landscape of our time. The juried competition results in an exhibition of about fifty finalists, with the prizewinners announced at the opening. The winner receives a grand prize of $25,000 and an opportunity to create a portrait for the Portrait Gallery's permanent collection. A fully illustrated publication accompanies the exhibition. The competition is named for Virginia Outwin Boochever (1920-2005), a former Portrait Gallery docent whose generous gift endowed this program. Amy Sherald says: Miss Everything was inspired by Alice in Wonderland. The big dress, the teacup. You're left with the impression that she's playing dress up but that she's also striving for something different than who she is. And seeing herself in a way that other people may not see her. Miss Everything is who she is now in this present moment. The idea of being seen as anything other than the color of her skin. Her name is Krystal. It took us about an hour just for her to relax to give me that pose where her shoulder went up and her chin went up and she just became Miss Everything in that one moment.

Portrait Observations and Analysis

* What aspect of the portrait do you notice first and why?

* Michelle Obama's dress dominates the composition. Describe her dress. What shapes do you see? Why might the artist have chosen to highlight this element of the portrait?

* Consider the background. Why might it be significant? * Consider Michelle Obama's facial expression. How would you describe it? * What adjectives would you use to describe Michelle Obama's pose?

* Look at Michelle Obama's skin color. Describe the color. How does the artist use color to reference past portraiture traditions? How does she use color to emphasize Michelle Obama's humanity?

* Michelle Obama and Amy Sherald both expressed an interest in bringing "black and brown bodies" into the museum. How does this portrait accomplish that goal?

* How does this portrait express Michelle Obama's individuality?

* Michelle Obama is the first African American first lady of the United States. "How" she is represented and "who" painted her portrait are important considerations. Why? How does Mrs. Obama stand for more than just herself through this portrait?

* How does Michelle Obama's portrait connect us to past artistic traditions? Why might it be important to look to the past?

* Consider the artist's use of color. How does the color palette help establish an overall mood in this portrait?

Extensions

* Discuss the significance of Michelle Obama's quote at the unveiling: "I'm also thinking about all the young people-particularly girls and girls of color-who in years ahead will come to this place and they will look up and they will see an image of someone who looks like them hanging on the wall of this great American institution. I know the kind of impact that will have on their lives, because I was one of those girls."

* Michelle Obama once said, "When someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you don't stoop to their level. No, our motto is, when they go low, we go high." What did she mean by that? Do you agree or disagree? Why or why not?

* Amy Sherald saw echoes of the quilts of Gee's Bend in Michelle Obama's Milly dress. The quilts of Gee's Bend represent the shared culture and heritage of a small group of African Americans in Alabama. Create your own quilt to illustrate your own culture and heritage.

* Michelle Obama said: "No country can ever truly flourish if it stifles the potential of its women and deprives itself of the contributions of half its citizens." Consider the women in your life. Compose a group portrait of the women who inspire you through their accomplishments and actions.

Michelle Obama's portrait:

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama by Amy Sherald, oil on linen, 2018. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Kate Capshaw and Steven Spielberg; Judith Kern and Kent Whealy; Tommie L. Pegues and Donald A. Capoccia; Clarence, DeLoise, and Brenda Gaines; Jonathan and Nancy Lee Kemper; The Stoneridge Fund of Amy and Marc Meadows; Robert E. Meyerhoff and Rheda Becker; Catherine and Michael Podell; Mark and Cindy Aron; Lyndon J. Barrois and Janine Sherman Barrois; The Honorable John and Louise Bryson; Paul and Rose Carter; Bob and Jane Clark; Lisa R. Davis; Shirley Ross Davis and Family; Alan and Lois Fern; Conrad and Constance Hipkins; Sharon and John Hoffman; Audrey M. Irmas; John Legend and Chrissy Teigen; Eileen Harris Norton; Helen Hilton Raiser; Philip and Elizabeth Ryan; Roselyne Chroman Swig; Josef Vascovitz and Lisa Goodman; Eileen Baird; Dennis and Joyce Black Family Charitable Foundation; Shelley Brazier; Aryn Drake-Lee; Andy and Teri Goodman; Randi Charno Levine and Jeffrey E. Levine; Fred M. Levin and Nancy Livingston, The Shenson Foundation; Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago; Arthur Lewis and Hau Nguyen; Sara and John Schram; Alyssa Taubman and Robert Rothman

Amy Sherald by Justin T. Gellerson; courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth. © Amy Sherald
Michelle Obama by Lawrence Jackson; Official White House Photo
Michelle Obama and Amy Sherald by Pete Souza; courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery. © 2018 Pete Souza
Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance) by Amy Sherald, oil on canvas, 2013. Frances and Burton Reifler. © Amy Sherald

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Download this Classroom Resource Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama is a lawyer, writer, and the wife of the 44th president, Barack Obama. She was the first African American first lady of the United States. As an advocate for healthy families, service members and their families, higher education, and international adolescent girls' education, she has become a role model.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Fact was she knew more about them than she knew about herself, having never had the map to discover what she was like 2014, 54 x 43 inches, Oil on canvas Grand Dame Queenie 2013, 54 x 43 in, Oil on Canvas collection: Smithsonian African American Museum Equilibrium 2012, 100 x 67 in, Oil on Canvas collection: US Embassy Dakar, Senegal High Yella Masterpiece: We Ain't No Cotton Pickin' Negroes 2011, 59 x 69 inches, Oil on Canvas

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
M. Florine Démosthène was born in the United States and raised between Port-au-Prince, Haiti and New York. Démosthène earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Parsons School for Design in New York and her Master of Fine Arts from Hunter College-City University of New York.

She has exhibited extensively through group and solo exhibitions in the USA, Caribbean, UK, Europe and Africa, with recent solo shows including, Between Possibility and Actuality at Mariane Ibrahim Gallery Chicago, a solo booth exhibition with Mariane Ibrahim Gallery at the The New York Armory Fair and
The Stories I Tell Myself with Gallery 1957 Accra, Ghana.

She is the recipient of a Wachtmeister Award, Tulsa Artist Fellowship, Arts Moves Africa Grant and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant. She has participated in residencies in the USA, Caribbean, UK, Slovakia, Ghana and Tanzania.

Her work can be seen at National Museum For African American History and Culture, Africa First Collection, University of South Africa (UNISA), Lowe Museum of Art, Hessler Museum of Art, PFF Collection of African American Art and in various private collections worldwide.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
M. Florine Démosthène was born in the United States and raised between Port-au-Prince, Haiti and New York. Démosthène earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Parsons School for Design in New York and her Master of Fine Arts from Hunter College-City University of New York.

# data[].attributes.headline
'Life-changing' Kehinde Wiley portrait goes on show at V&A

# data[].attributes.subject
'Life-changing' Kehinde Wiley portrait goes on show at V&A

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A young EastEnder has described the "life-changing" moment she saw her portrait on the wall at the V&A.

Melissa Thompson was walking through Ridley Road market in Dalston when she was spotted by US artist Kehinde Wiley, who shot to fame when he painted Barack Obama's presidential portrait.

The resulting two-metre oil painting was first shown at the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow but has now been bought by the V&A.

Thompson, who grew up in Hackney and now lives in Ilford, was with her family when she was approached by the painter.

She said: "It was such a surreal moment when Kehinde Wiley approached me at Ridley Road Market and asked to take my portrait - I never thought I would end up in a museum.

"His work is so unique and powerful, it was a really life-changing thing for me. I love this portrait - it captures a moment in time. Seeing it on the wall at the V&A feels really special - I can now see parts of my own culture and east London represented in a museum."

Los Angeles-born Wiley made his name by creating Old Master style portraits of people of colour and made history in 2018 when he became the first African-American artist to paint an official U.S. Presidential portrait for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.

The painting of Ms Thompson will eventually become part of the collection at the V&A's new site in Stratford which is set to start opening in 2024.

Gus Casely-Hayford, Director of V&A East, said: " One of our first acquisitions for V&A East, the painting speaks to the creative heritage and cultural diversity of east London and will help realise our ambitions to spotlight previously underrepresented artists and movements through V&A East's programme, which tells global stories of creativity and reflects the pressing debates in society today."

Read More
Insulate Britain turn on London blocking four major commuter routes 'We are worried sick': Family of missing London woman plead for help Six the Musical finally beats Covid to open on Broadway

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
'Life-changing' Kehinde Wiley portrait goes on show at V&A

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Melissa Thompson was walking through Ridley Road market in Dalston when she was spotted by US artist Kehinde Wiley, who shot to fame when he painted Barack Obama's presidential portrait. The resulting two-metre oil painting was first shown at the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow but has now been bought by the V&A.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In Balance in Nature we see the work of a more mature Beardy and, as the title suggests, it communicates ideas related to ecology. In this stylized work, two figures are joined in one body, 'man' on one side and 'nature ', represented by the bear, on the other. There is a suggestion of motion created by the curving upswept line and the two characters appear to be wrestling. They are balanced asymmetrically and outlined with a brown- coloured paint. 'Man' is reaching out and looking toward 'nature' while 'nature' turns away and maintains a powerful untamed expression.

The struggle suggested in this work represents ideas of man ' s survival within the environment. Thinking about tsunamis, cyclones and unforgiving prairie blizzards, we can see that while we think we may be superior, nature is a powerful force that needs to be respected. Beardy, storyteller/artist that he is, visually counsels us to revere our environment and protect it if we hope to support future generations. We cannot turn our back on nature and our environment or there will be serious consequences.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Jackson Beardy: Balance in Nature - MacKenzie Art Gallery

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In Balance in Nature we see the work of a more mature Beardy and, as the title suggests, it communicates ideas related to ecology. In this stylized work, two figures are joined in one body, 'man' on one side and 'nature ', represented by the bear, on the other.

# data[].attributes.headline
Sisters and Brothers (Kent Monkman - 3 min)

# data[].attributes.subject
Sisters and Brothers (Kent Monkman - 3 min)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In a pounding critique of Canada’s colonial history, this short film draws parallels between the annihilation of the bison in the 1890s and the devastation inflicted on the …

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
KANANGINAK POOTOOGOOK

1935 - 2010

Kananginak had been involved with drawing and printmaking since the late 1950's when the West Baffin Eskimo Co-op first initiated the graphic arts program at Cape Dorset. Kananginak's first print, a collaborative image with his father, Pootoogook, was included in the first catalogued collection of Cape Dorset prints in 1959. His work has been included in all but three annual collections since that time.

Kananginak and his siblings grew up in different camp areas on south Baffin Island. Their main camp was Ikerrasak where their father, Pootoogook, was the respected camp leader. Kananginak married Shooyoo from Cape Dorset in the mid-1950's. They lived at Ikerrasak until 1958 when they moved to Cape Dorset because of Pootoogook's failing health.

From the beginning Kananginak had represented Arctic wildlife in his work. He was especially capable at drawing the many species of birds, which frequent the Arctic. In the 2000's he focused on the material culture of the Inuit, producing realistic, narrative drawings of camp and hunting scenes. His work has been produced in several print media - copper engravings, stonecuts, stencils, lithographs and etchings. Kananginak was an accomplished printmaker himself; in the early years he often proofed and editioned his work.

Kananginak was a prominent and involved community leader. He was instrumental in the formation of the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative and served for many years as President of its Board of Directors. He was also a member of the Royal Canadian Academy.

In 1978, the World Wildlife Commission released a limited edition portfolio of works in which four of Kananginak's images were included. His work has been featured in numerous exhibitions in both public instiutions and commercial galleries. He was also a notable sculptor.

In 1997, Kananginak was commissioned by the Governor General of Canada, Romeo Leblanc, to construct an Inukshut in Cape Dorset, which was then deconstructed and shipped to Ottawa. Kananginak and his son, Johnny, were then invited to Ottawa to re-assemble the Inukshuk on the grounds of Rideau Hall as part of a tribute to native people in Canada.

Kananginak lived in Cape Dorset with his wife, Shooyoo and their family until his death in 2010.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Kananginak Pootoogook - DORSET FINE ARTS

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
KANANGINAK POOTOOGOOK 1935 - 2010 Kananginak had been involved with drawing and printmaking since the late 1950's when the West Baffin Eskimo Co-op first initiated the graphic arts program at Cape Dorset. Kananginak's first print, a collaborative image with his father, Pootoogook, was included in the first catalogued collection of Cape Dorset prints in 1959.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
COPYRIGHT & USAGE

Welcome to

ARTIST PROFILE

Odjig Arts provides accurate information on artist Daphne Odjig, sale of prints, works of art, Nanabush books and copyright approval.

Internationally recognized and renowned artist Daphne Odjig was born September 11, 1919 and raised on the Wikwemikong Unceded Indian Reserve on Manitoulin Island (Lake Huron), Ontario Canada. Her father and her grandfather, Chief Jonas Odjig, were Potawatomi, descended from the great chief Black Partridge. The Odjig family was among the Potawatomi who migrated north and settled in Wikwemikong after the war of 1812. The Potawatomi (Keepers of the Fire) were members with the Ojibwa and Odawa, of the Three Fires Confederacy of the Great Lakes.

Daphne Odjig's achievements include, but are not limited to:

The first, and as of November 2009, the only First Nation woman artist to show at the National Gallery of Canada.

Order of Canada

Order of British Columbia

Seven Honorary Degrees

National Aboriginal Achievement Award

Governor General's Laureate, Visual and Media Arts (Canada's highest honour in the field of visual arts)

Expression Award, National Film Board of Canada, in recognition of work that champions Canadian cultural diversity

Honorary Fellowship, Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada

Please refer to the Artist Profile for an expanded list of honours and awards.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
daphne
odjig
art
first nation
contemporary canadian art
painter
somerville
nanabush
order of canada
kelowna
oils
acrylics
silkscreen
prints
murals
pen and ink
pastels
watercolour

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Daphne Odjig is an internationally recognized Canadian First Nations artist providing prints, collectibles, images, fashion, glass and copyright approval for her works. Daphne has received the Order of Canada, is a Governor General's Laureate and has been featured at the Museum of Civilization.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
SHUVINAI ASHOONA

1961-
When I start to draw I remember things that I have experienced or seen. Although I do not attempt to recreate these images exactly, that is what might happen. Sometimes they come out more realistically but sometimes they turn out completely different. That is what happens when I draw.
-Shuvinai Ashoona (From "Ghost Noise"; Produced and directed by Marcia Connolly)

Shuvinai was born in Cape Dorset in August, 1961. She is the daughter of Kiawak Ashoona and Sorosilutu, both well known for their contributions to the arts in Cape Dorset.

Shuvinai began drawing in 1996. She works with pen and ink, coloured pencils and oil sticks and her sensibility for the landscape around the community of Cape Dorset is particularly impressive. Her recent work is very personal and often meticulously detailed. Shuvinai's work was first included in the Cape Dorset annual print collection in 1997 with two small dry-point etchings entitled Interior (97-33) and Settlement (97-34). Since then, she has become a committed and prolific graphic artist, working daily in the Kinngait Studios

Shuvinai's work has attracted the attention of several notable private galleries as well as public institutions. She was featured along with her aunt, Napachie Pootoogook, and her grandmother, the late Pitseolak Ashoona, in the McMichael Canadian Collection's 1999 exhibition entitled "Three Women, Three Generations". More Recently she was profiled along with Qavavau Manumie of Cape Dorset and Nick Sikkuark of Gjoa Haven in the Spring 2008 issue of Border Crossings, a Winnipeg-based arts magazine.

In an unusual contemporary collaboration, Shuvinai recently worked with Saskatchewan-based artist, John Noestheden, on a "sky-mural" that was exhibited at the 2008 Basel Art Fair and was shown again at Toronto's 2008 "Nuit Blanche". It later traveled to the 18th Biennale of Sydney in 2012 and in 2013 it was part of 'Sakahans' an exhibition of international Indigenous art at the National Gallery of Canada. In 2009 her work was presented alongside Toronto-based artist Shari Boyle at the Justina Barnicke Gallery at Hart House. Shuvinai is also the subject of a documentary art film, Ghost Noise, produced and directed by Marcia Connolly.

Shuvinai is slowly gaining more international attention and in 2013 she was included in the prestigious Phaudin publication, 'Vitamin D2. New Perspectives in Drawing'. Shuvinai will be represented at SITElines 2014 Unsettled Landscapes in Sante Fe, New Mexico.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
SHUVINAI ASHOONA 1961- When I start to draw I remember things that I have experienced or seen. Although I do not attempt to recreate these images exactly, that is what might happen. Sometimes they come out more realistically but sometimes they turn out completely different. That is what happens when I draw.

# data[].attributes.headline
Art Gallery of Ontario - Indigenous Collection

# data[].attributes.subject
Art Gallery of Ontario - Indigenous Collection

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
ABOUT THE COLLECTION

Indigenous art at the AGO currently includes works from the First Peoples of North America, namely First Nations, Inuit, and Metis. The collection also includes global Indigenous Art from Africa, Australia, and the Torres Strait Islands. Indigenous Art is the oldest in the world and our collections reflect recent and historical practices and the continuities in between. Indigenous Art encompasses practices outside the Eurocentric traditions of artistic creation and categorization, as well as engagement with all major movements in art today. Indigenous art comes out of living cultures, making it highly dynamic and changing over time.

Developing the First Nations, Inuit and Metis art collection is one of the AGO's primary collecting goals. From Haida master carver Charles Edenshaw, to contemporary Mohawk artist Shelley Niro, the collection spans artistic movements across several centuries.

The historic First Nation's work includes exemplary objects such as the Anishnaabe Gunstock Club (anonymous, early 1800s), which in 2002 became the AGO's first major acquisition of Ontario's First Nations heritage, a selection of argillite poles by Charles Edenshaw (c.1839-1920), and the argillite and ivory Sea Captain (Haida, anonymous, circa 1840), acquired in 2008. Acquiring works by contemporary Indigenous artists is a critical goal, as is ensuring that the collection and programming reflect the historical diversity of Canadian society.

One of the distinguishing features of the collection is its contemporary Inuit art, with an emphasis on work produced in Canada since 1948. Among the more than 5,000 objects in the Gallery's holdings are some 2,800 sculptures, 1,300 prints, 700 drawings and a selection of wall hangings. The AGO's current collecting focus is on new Inuit artworks, especially those that express the current state of affairs in the far North. Manasie Akpaliapik's large whalebone, ivory, stone, antler, baleen and horn sculpture Respecting the Circle is another example of one of the AGO's most popular works on display.

Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander

The AGO's collection of more than 1,000 Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artwork is the largest in Canada.

A gift from an anonymous donor in 2002, these works come from New South Wales, the Northern territory, Queensland, South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia, with a focus on artwork from the northern and central part of the continent.

A highlight of the collection is its 327 boomerangs, each unique and representative of a regional style.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Indigenous art at the AGO currently includes works from the First Peoples of North America, namely First Nations, Inuit, and Metis. The collection also includes global Indigenous Art from Africa, Australia, and the Torres Strait Islands. Indigenous Art is the oldest in the world and our collections reflect recent and historical practices and the continuities in between.

# data[].attributes.body
Find various current Indigenous artists and their works in this repository.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Resilience: 50 Indigenous Art Cards and Teaching Guide is a boxed set that contains 50 full-colour, 8" x 10" reproductions of contemporary Indigenous art and a bilingual (English/French) teaching guide, full of ideas on how to use the art cards to animate discussions and inspire activities in all subjects, from kindergarten to grade 12.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
PITSEOLAK ASHOONA

1904-1983

Pitseolak was born in 1904 on Nottingham Island in the Hudson Straights, while her family was en route from Sugluk (now Salluit) on the north coast of Arctic Quebec to the south coast of Baffin Island. She spent her childhood in several camps on the south Baffin coast. As a young woman she married Ashoona and she bore 17 children, Pitseolak was the mother of several Cape Dorset artists, the Ashoonas Ottochie, Komwartok, Kaka and Kiawak; and Napatchie Pootoogook. Ashoona died during a epidemic in the Nettling Lake area he was still in his prime, leaving Pitseolak to raise their young family on her own. She settled permanently in Cape Dorset in the early 1960's.

Pitseolak was among the first in Cape Dorset to begin drawing, and the most prolific. She made close to 9,000 drawings during her 20 years in Cape Dorset. Her prints have appeared in every annual print collection since her work was first published in 1960. Her best and most authentic drawings were of "the old Eskimo ways", a way of life deeply embedded in her memory. Pitseolak was been awarded several honours over the years, and her work has been the subject of several projects. In 1971 the National Film Board produced a film based on her book, "Pitseolak: Pictures out of my life". In 1974 she was elected a member of the Royal Canadian Academy and she received the Order of Canada in 1977. Pitseolak died in 1983 and is buried behind the Anglican Church in Cape Dorset. She fulfilled her promise to work on her drawings and prints until she was no longer able. Her vast legacy of orginal work now resides on long term loan at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection where it is being photographed, documented and exhibited.*
*West Baffin Island Co-op, 1999.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
PITSEOLAK ASHOONA 1904-1983 Pitseolak was born in 1904 on Nottingham Island in the Hudson Straights, while her family was en route from Sugluk (now Salluit) on the north coast of Arctic Quebec to the south coast of Baffin Island. She spent her childhood in several camps on the south Baffin coast.

# data[].attributes.body
Gallery of artistic expressions made in commemoration of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Art is a powerful tool for commemoration. Public commemorations, through art, can help bring forward personal stories of colonial violence. Art as commemoration bears witness to injustice, recognizes human dignity of victims and survivors, and calls institutions, systems and structures to account. The National Inquiry is honoured to share some of the hundreds of artistic expressions gifted throughout the Truth Gathering Process. All artists retain copyright.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Art is a powerful tool for commemoration. Public commemorations, through art, can help bring forward personal stories of colonial violence. Art as commemoration bears witness to injustice, recognizes human dignity of victims and survivors, and calls institutions, systems and structures to account.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Cultural Background: Algonquin, Long Point First Nations, QC

A Native North American Algonquin, born in Ville-Marie, Quebec in 1952, Frank Polson is a member of the Long Point First Nation (Northwestern Quebec).

Frank is a self-taught artist who produces works of unique beauty, which is relevant to today and in accordance with his heritage. For the last four years he has worked at developing his unique style in the medium of acrylics. He has rekindled his fond memories of many pleasurable and educational seasons, spent on the trap lines with his father and has tried to capture those wonderful memories on canvas among the glorious sunsets and the sounds and feelings of the wilderness' days and nights. The sound of the "Great Northern Diver" and the cry of the "Timber Wolf" seem to haunt his vision of the beautiful Quebec Northwest.

Frank credits the Elders for helping him find and maintain balance in his life, to overcome his problems and conflicts and to live with and finally defeat the frustration that followed him for so many years. He finally knows that he can stop running and that he has nothing to prove to the world.

"Painting makes me feel like I'm doing something for myself."

Origine Culturelle: Algonquin, Long Point First Nations, QC

Né à Ville Marie, Québec en 1952, Frank Polson qui est membre de la Première Nation Long Point (nord-ouest québécois) est un Algonquin nord américain.

Frank est un artiste autodidacte qui produit des œuvres d'une beauté unique qui est pertinent pour aujourd'hui et conformément à son patrimoine. Depuis les quatre dernières années, il a travaillé à développer son style unique dans le médium des acryliques. Il a ravivé ses souvenirs friands de nombreuses saisons de plaisir et d'éducation passées en compagnie de son père sur les lignes de trapistes. Il a tenté de capturer ces merveilleux souvenirs sur toile de ces couchers de soleil ainsi que les sons et sentiments de la faune jours et nuits. Le son du grand oiseau plongeur du Nord ainsi que le cri du loup semblent hanter sa vision de la beauté du Nord-Ouest du Québec.

Frank est très reconnaissant envers les Sages de l'avoir aidé à trouver et à maintenir son équilibre dans la vie, à surmonter des problèmes et conflits. Ils lui ont aussi appris à vivre avec et finalement vaincre la frustration qui l'a suivi pendant tant d'années. Il s'aperçoit enfin qu'il peut arrêter de courir et qu'il n'a rien à prouver au monde entier.

" La peinture me fait ressentir que je fais quelque chose pour moi.
This artist's works are also available in Note Card Boxed Sets.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Frank Polson - Sa-Cinn Native Enterprises

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Cultural Background: Algonquin, Long Point First Nations, QC A Native North American Algonquin, born in Ville-Marie, Quebec in 1952, Frank Polson is a member of the Long Point First Nation (Northwestern Quebec). Frank is a self-taught artist who produces works of unique beauty, which is relevant to today and in accordance with his heritage.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Quotes About

Norval Morrisseau

"Few exhibits in Canadian history have touched off a greater immediate stir than Morrisseau's" - Time magazine

"Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall, meeting Morrisseau in Paris compared him to Picasso. The French press thus dubbing him"
"Picasso of the North"

"Norval Morrisseau's courageous and often controversial approach to his work was instrumental in encouraging First Nations people to know their spirituality, history and culture in order to better understand themselves, He taught us to be proud of who we are."
- Phil Fontaine, National Chief of The Assembly of First Nations

"Known as one of the greatest painters â€"that Canada has ever produced, Morrisseau gained an international reputation as one of Canada's most original master artists".
- Canadian Broadcasting Company

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"Few exhibits in Canadian history have touched off a greater immediate stir than Morrisseau's" - Time magazine "Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall, meeting Morrisseau in Paris compared him to Picasso.

# data[].attributes.headline
African Canadian Online - York University

# data[].attributes.subject
African Canadian Online - York University

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Visual Art: Gallery

Aspects of African Canadian Visual Art
Visual Art | Gallery | Artists | Up-and-Coming

Works

This page contains work by the following artists. Click on their name to travel to the artists' biography page where you will find biographical information and more images. If you click on any image in this section it will take you to a larger version. Please be aware that the copying of any images from this site is strictly prohibited without written permission from the artist.

Artists of CAN:BAIA (Canadian Artists Network: Black Artists In Action)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
African Canadian Online: An Online Resource by the Centre for the Study of Black Cultures in Canada

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Aspects of African Canadian Visual Art Visual Art | Gallery | Artists | Up-and-Coming Works This page contains work by the following artists. Click on their name to travel to the artists' biography page where you will find biographical information and more images.