Tarah Hogue

Marian Penner Bancroft, Wanda Nanibush, Tania Willard

May 7 - July 29, 2016
SFU Gallery

"I am using my arm to determine the length of the gaze."
-Eve Tuck and C. Ree, "A Glossary of Haunting" in Handbook of Autoethnography.

A traveller that passes through. A home that one leaves or returns to. A haunting. Unsettled Sites is a group exhibition that slips amongst the complex entanglements of belonging and refusal from both settler and Indigenous perspectives. The works disturb the ubiquity of settler colonialism, the violent cleaving of Indigenous inhabitants from the land through both physical removal and forced cultural assimilation--reserves and residential schools to name only two of many such policies. In presuming entitlement to the development and ownership of land, colonialism creates past and future ghosts to achieve and legitimize its aims. Conversely, by dwelling in the incommensurable, that which refuses easy consumption or erasure, the artists in the exhibition collapse the mythology of settlement.

In installation, photography and video, the authoritative fixity of representational media is betrayed as those bodies presumed to be contained--as ghosts, as pop culture signifiers one step removed from the referent--return to haunt the image as desiring bodies, as spectres, as present absences that make even the quotidian an uncertain experience. In mining the historical and present circumstances that mutually implicate us, the works in Unsettled Sites point to urgent questions of response and action: What does it mean to carry home with us? Can one both belong to a place and remain unsettled? What does an ethic of visiting look like? What does it mean to haunt the structures of settler colonialism? These creative acts of sovereignty and cohabitation exceed the colonial framework and open possibilities for alternate futures, though the path ahead may not be entirely clear, harmonious or prescriptive in its politics.

Marian Penner Bancroft works with photography, text, video, sculpture and sound. Recent work addresses issues of public history (both Canadian and European) and the construction of the visual imagination, particularly as they relate to music and mapping strategies in representing the landscape. Bancroft studied at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver School of Art, and Ryerson University. National and international exhibitions include those at Vancouver Art Gallery, Sala Uno in Rome, Italy, and Centre Culturel Canadien in Paris. Her work is in the collections of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, National Gallery of Canada, Burnaby Art Gallery, Belkin Gallery, Canada Council Art Bank, and Canada House in London, UK. Bancroft was the 2009 recipient of the City of Vancouver's Mayor’s Arts Award for Visual Art and the 2012 Audain Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts. She is a Professor Emeritus at Emily Carr University and is represented by the Republic Gallery.

Wanda Nanibush is an Anishinaabe-kwe image and word warrior, curator and community organizer living in her territory of Chimnissing. Currently, Nanibush is a guest curator at the Art Gallery of Ontario and is touring her exhibition The Fifth World, which opened January 2016 at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery. The island life allows her to finish upcoming projects, including a film called A Love Letter to My People, also a documentary on Gerald Vizenor, and a book called Violence No More (Arp Press), as well as an anthology of Indigenous curatorial writing and more. She has an MA in Visual Studies from the University of Toronto and has taught doctoral courses on Indigenous history and politics at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. 

Tania Willard, Secwepemc Nation, works within the shifting ideas around contemporary and traditional, often working with bodies of knowledge and skills that are conceptually linked to her interest in intersections between Aboriginal and other cultures. Willard has worked as an artist in residence with Gallery Gachet in Vancouver, Banff Centre's visual arts residency, and as a curator in residence with grunt gallery. Willard's work is in the collections of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Kamloops Art Gallery and Thompson Rivers University. Willard’s curatorial work includes Beat Nation: Art Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture, co-curated with Kathleen Ritter that toured from Vancouver Art Gallery to Montreal, Toronto, Kamloops, Halifax and Regina. Willard was the Aboriginal Curator in Residence at Kamloops Art Gallery until 2015. Current projects include,Rule of the Trees, a public art project at Commercial Broadway SkyTrain station and BUSH gallery, a conceptual land-based gallery grounded in Indigenous knowledges.

Events

Opening Reception and Conversation with Tarah Hogue, Marian Penner Bancroft and Tania Willard
SAT, MAY 7 2016 / 1PM
SFU Gallery, Burnaby (gallery opens at 12PM)

Reading and Walk
SAT, MAY 28 / 1PM
SFU Gallery, Burnaby

Adam Gold, Valeen Jules and Cease Wyss will lead a poetry and walking tour of Burnaby Mountain. They will discuss the intersections of Indigenous plant knowledge and the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline protests. 

Adam Gold is a land defender and 60’s scoop survivor of Heiltsuk, Tsimshian, and German ancestry. He has been involved with organizing around land defense since 2013.

Valeen Jules is a young poet and motivational speaker from the Nuu-chah-nulth and Kwakwaka'wakw nations. She has been public speaking and performing poetry since the movement on Burnaby Mountain in November 2014. Valeen's words are inspired by decolonial love and she hopes to use this artistic avenue to help recreate our society into a community and a future worth living for.

T'uy't'tanat - Cease Wyss is Skwxwu7mesh/Sto:Lo/ Hawaiian/Swiss and lives and works in her ancestral lands and waters. She is a multidisciplinary artist and a traditionally trained ethnobotanist. Her work is culturally and spiritually based, and often site specific. 

Video

Unsettled Sites: Conversation with curator, Tarah Hogue, and artists, Marian Penner Bancroft and Tania Willard
SAT, MAY 7 2016 / 1PM
SFU Gallery, Burnaby

Review

Raymond Boisjoly and Jonah Gray, "Unsettled Sites: Haunting Canadian Colonialism," Canadian Art, http://canadianart.ca/reviews/unsettled-sites/

Two days of performances and discussions
Friday and Saturday, March 4 and 5, 2016

Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson describe resurgence as “the rebuilding of Indigenous nations according to our own political, intellectual and cultural traditions.”

Cutting Copper: Indigenous Resurgent Practice, a collaborative project between grunt gallery and the Belkin Art Gallery that I co-organized with Shelly Rosenblum, aimed to bring together a cross-disciplinary group of artists, curators, writers, educators, scholars, students and activists to explore the embodied theory of Indigenous resurgence and cultural representation – from the perspectives of their own disciplines and one another’s.

This event focued specifically on the role that contemporary Indigenous artistic practice can and does play in redefining cultural tradition, representation, and the relations between Settler and Indigenous peoples at sites of creativity, community, and dissent.

A series of performances at the Belkin Art Gallery responded to the exhibition Lalakenis/All Directions: A Journey of Truth and Unity by Kwakwaka’wakw artist Beau Dick, and were followed by thematic discussions held at the Liu Institute for Global Issues and the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, UBC.

Cutting Copper: Indigenous Resurgent Practice was presented with support from the British Columbia Arts Council.

PROGRAM

FRIDAY, MARCH 4

Recognition, Refusal and Resurgence

2 pm: Performance | Dana Claxton
Location: Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery (UBC)
1825 Main Mall, Vanouver, BC V6T 1Z2

Discussion Panel | Linc Kesler, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Alfred Taiaiake; Moderator: Shelly Rosenblum
Location: Liu Institute for Global Issues, UBC, 6476 NW Marine Drive

This panel will address some of the theoretical interventions at play when considering the ways in which Indigenous peoples have sought to overcome the contemporary life of settler-colonization and achieve self-determination through cultural production and critique.

SATURDAY, MARCH 5

Creations, Insertions and Rebuffs: Cultural Institutions and Practice

9:30 am: Performance | Maria Hupfield and Charlene Vickers
Location: Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery

Discussion Panel | Jarrett Martineau, Wanda Nanibush, Tannis Nielsen; Moderator: Lorna Brown
Location: Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, University Centre, UBC, 6331 Crescent Road

This panel will address the role of performative, educational, curatorial or programming models to investigate how they might challenge or alter institutions’ interactions with Indigenous peoples.

Sovereignty Across Disciplines

2 pm: Performance | Tanya Lukin Linklater
Location: Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery

Discussion Panel | Julie Nagam, Michelle Raheja, Dylan Robinson; Moderator: Tarah Hogue
Location: Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, University Centre, UBC, 6331 Crescent Road

This panel will explore intersecting fields of literature, film, media, cultural studies, and dance as modalities of resurgent cultural expression.

DOCUMENTATION

Photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/gruntgallery/sets/72157667298206250

Video: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuXU946O0WwASEv-GDnidZi9WAQBaJdd0

Witnesses: Art and Canada's Indian Residential Schools

Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery

September 6 - December 1, 2013

Co-Curator

Download the exhibition catalogue.

Witnesses: Art and Canada’s Indian Residential Schools presents artists who have produced work arising from the history of Indian Residential Schools in Canada and coincides with, but is independent from, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada National Event that will take place in Vancouver from September 18 to 21, 2013. The exhibition features artists from British Columbia and across Canada, and is cross-generational to include those who directly experienced Indian Residential Schools as well as those who are witnesses to its ongoing impact. There is a sense in which we all must be witnesses. Witnesses aims to contribute to the education of the public about Indian Residential Schools, to illustrate how this issue has become embedded in Canadian art history and to demonstrate the strong social and cultural capacity of art. Combined, the works in the exhibition represent a convergence of various voices addressing this often difficult aspect of Canada’s colonial history.

The exhibition includes iconic historical works by artists such as Joane Cardinal-Schubert, Alex Janvier and Norval Morrisseau, as well as more recent work and special commissions by some of Canada’s most respected contemporary artists. Works have been sourced from across Canada and borrowed from artists, collectors and museums. Other artists include Gerry Ambers, Carl Beam, Rebecca Belmore, Chris Bose, Cathy Busby, Beau Dick, Faye HeavyShield, Lisa Jackson, Gina Laing, Peter Morin, Jamasie Pitseolak, Skeena Reece, Sandra Semchuk and James Nicholas, Henry Speck, Adrian Stimson, Tania Willard and Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun. Public and educational programming will include guided tours, lectures, artist talks, performances and online programs.

Witnesses is curated by Geoffrey Carr, Dana Claxton, Tarah Hogue, Shelly Rosenblum, Charlotte Townsend-Gault, Keith Wallace and Scott Watson. This project is made possible with the generous support of the Audain Foundation, the Vancouver Foundation, the Canada Council for the Arts, The Leon and Thea Koerner Foundation, the British Columbia Arts Council and our Belkin Curator’s Forum members. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the UBC Hampton Fund.

Health Supports

Working with Residential School history can be very stressful. If you encounter distress, resources are available. Please click here to learn more or call 1-866-925-4419 to access the Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line.

EVENTS

OPENING: September 7, 1-2 pm, Performance of Joane Cardinal-Schubert’s The Lesson and 2-4 pm, Opening remarks and reception
ARTIST TALKS: September 8, 1:30 pm with Jamasie Pitseolak and Tania Willard
PERFORMANCE: September 26, 12:30 pm by Peter Morin
ARTIST TALK: October 10, 12:30 pm with Beau Dick
ARTIST TALK: October 31, 12:30 pm with Cathy Busby
SYMPOSIUM: November 15 Traumatic Histories, Artistic Practice, and Working from the Margins – Watch the MORNING SESSION and AFTERNOON SESSION
BELKIN 101: A Weekly Reading Group
CONCERT: Friday, November 29, 2 pm with UBC Contemporary Players
PERFORMANCE: Sunday, December 1, 12:30 pm by Peter Morin

An exhibition of First Nations Artists, Residential School Survivors and their Descendants

Curated by Tarah Hogue and Rose M. Spahan

September 2013

NET-ETH: Going out of the Darkness is a group exhibition of twenty-four contemporary and traditional First Nations artists, including Chris Bose, Lacie Burning, Rande Cook, Bracken Hanuse Corlett, Brenda Crabtree, Lindsay Delorande, Wayne Dennis, Melvin Dunn, Ken Faris, Mimi Gellman, Richard Heikkilä-Sawan, Raven John, Jordana Luggi, David Neel, Ellena Neel, Lou-ann Ika’wega Neel, Jada-Gabrielle Pape, Dionne Paul, Kelly Roulette, Patricia Lena Teichert, Adrian Stimson, Jerry Whitehead, Tania Willard, and Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, among them are Indian Residential School survivors and their descendants whose work is a powerful testimony to their personal healing process.

“NET-ULH: Going out of the darkness, at first daylight, when you pray and cleanse your tools to make them strong. Listen, we must listen, an important process of opening up to the light, opening up to intergenerational trauma so we all heal together.” 
– Ti Te-In, Shane Point Siem, Musqueam Elder

Held at three locations: Malaspina Printmakers Society, Concourse Gallery at Emily Carr University, Urban Aboriginal Fair Trade Gallery in Skwachàys Healing Lodge.

–> Download the full exhibition catalogue

Catalogue Excerpts:

Setting out to make artworks about Indian Residential Schools is a risky endeavor. It is an emotional subject and a political subject. Each artist took risks in creating this work. I will be blunt about this—taking a risk means potentially causing harm. This means the artist could find creating the work traumatic, rather than healing, although the work may be successful in evoking healing for viewers. Or a piece may be cathartic for an artist and yet does not provide a similar effect for viewers. NET-ETH requires the artists to risk themselves, and they undertook those risks. As a whole, we might be able to say the exhibition creates a start to a healing process. The artists’ willingness to take on the painful subject provides a visible process for our own examination of history and its role in creating our present circumstances. 
– Lara Evans, “Curatorial Statements”

Our collective memory is like a weathered house post that we unearth from beneath luscious green moss, or a treasured woven basket with gaping holes but still carrying the perfect intricate pattern of loving hands.

We can either see destruction, feel pain, carry defeat or seek and find the treasures and rebuild with what we find. We need our personal power to heal ourselves, we need each other to heal our people but most of all we need to search for the story in our mind and heart and spirit. With this common story in the light of day, we can be a part of a solution.
– Maxine Pape, “Healing from the Residential School Experience”

The IRS system was a massive effort between church and state to eradicate indigenous culture through assimilating children into the Canadian body politic by replacing one set of worldviews with another. It was, in other words, a form of ontological warfare meant to separate children from their roots in language, cultural practices and oral narratives that fundamentally inform the way in which a person interacts with their environment.
– Tarah Hogue, “A Shared and Difficult History”

Press Links

Bernard, Stephanie, “Coming out of the darkness: The NET-ETH exhibit at Granville Island works to heal,” The Peak, September 30, 2013, http://www.the-peak.ca/2013/09/coming-out-of-the-darkness/

“For more than 120 years…” Coastal Art Beat, http://www.coastalartbeat.ca/?p=2489

Godman, Chloe, “Emily Carr’s Brenda Crabtree and Lou-Ann Neel Discuss the ‘NET-ETH: Going out of the Darkness’ Show and Other Truth and Reconciliation Events,” http://woopublication.tumblr.com/post/63630505062/emily-carrs-brenda-crabtree-and-lou-ann-neel-discuss

Sproule, Michelle, “SCOUT LIST: 10 Things That You Should Absolutely Do Between Now & Next Week,” September 10, 2013, http://scoutmagazine.ca/2013/09/10/scout-list-10-things-that-you-should-absolutely-do-between-now-next-week-59/

Turner, Michael, “Swarm Celebrates Vancouver’s Artist-Run Autumn,” Canadian Art, September 25, 2013, http://www.canadianart.ca/reviews/2013/09/25/swarm-vancouver/