Take the power back Indigenous interdisciplinary artist reclaims beauty as a tool of resistance By: Jen Zoratti Posted: 4:57 PM CDT Thursday, Jul. 4, 2024

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This article was published 04/07/2024 (843 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winyan (wee-yahn) is the Dakota word for “woman.”

It’s also the title of a major solo exhibition by local Dakota/Anishinaabe/Métis interdisciplinary artist Lita Fontaine opening Friday at WAG-Qaumajuq.

Curated by Marie-Anne Redhead, assistant curator of Indigenous and contemporary art at WAG-Qaumajuq, Lita Fontaine: Winyan serves as both a celebration and reclamation of beauty as a tool — not of oppression, but of resistance and resilience.

“Lita’s work has never shied away from reclaiming space, practice and ceremony. She has always called into question cultural and hegemonic norms that attempted to exclude or ignore the presence of Indigenous women,” Redhead says.

“For me, this exhibition is also about beauty as a methodology to combat the trauma of colonialism.”

Dresses play a significant role in Fontaine’s artistic practice, whether it’s physical dresses or the pen/paint marker drawings from her 2024 Saηksaηnića (the Dakota word for “dress”) series. Her mother sewed dresses, and so did her two-spirit sibling; her work is a reference to that tradition. Many of the dresses are decorated with clouds, flowers, strawberries and plants — motifs that are not only beautiful, but rich in medicine and meaning.

“To me, the dress is a sacred vessel because we’re sacred beings as women. It’s not the vessel that’s sacred. We’re making that vessel sacred,” Fontaine says.

The works in Winyan pull from throughout Fontaine’s decades-long career. A founding member of Urban Shaman, a gallery of contemproary Indigenous art, Fontaine, now 65, enrolled in the University of Manitoba’s school of art program as a single mom in her late 20s and went on to earn a master of fine art from the University of Regina.

In addition to making her own work, Fontaine is an arts educator, recently having retired from the Seven Oaks School Division where she was artist-in-residence.

An exhibition of this size focused on her work is going to “bring me up in calibre,” she says.

“You know, I struggled as an artist. I went to school. I have met people over the years who’ve been at that level, but I never could get there because my community was in the classroom for 22 years. I had to earn a living. I had to have a job.

“Over the years I just decided that when I retire, I’m going to get back to my work, and that’s what happened.”

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The walls in the exhibition space are not painted gallery white for Winyan, but rather a soft baby pink — a loaded colour and one curator Redhead has been thinking about since the Barbiecore summer of 2023. She notes that there isn’t quite the same level of vitriol for other colours as there is for pink, owing to its association with femininity.

“When people say they hate pink, they’re saying something,” Redhead says.

Pink is also a lighter shade of red, and a red stripe runs through the exhibition — a streak, perhaps, of Fontaine’s youthful activism.

To that end, red surrounds the exhibition’s centrepiece: A Woman’s Drum (4th Resurrection). This drum — constructed out of wood, hide and various mixed media — is, as the title suggests, the fourth iteration of a work that has been an important part of Fontaine’s life for the past 24 years.

“I was doing a political piece on the woman around the drum, because 20, 25 years ago, women weren’t allowed (at the drum),” she explains. “It was just starting to come into play — women were reclaiming the drum. And at the time, I had a little more angst. I was a little more political.”

The original drum was in storage for a while; finally, one day, it cracked.

“And to me, in a spiritual way, that’s when the issue was over,” she says.

This drum beats for now. Fontaine is in a different place these days. She’s in her pink era, so to speak.

“Because I’ve Sundanced for eight years, I’ve come to learn about who I am as a Sundancer and an Indigenous woman — but I learned about the medicines and the way of our culture, and I’ve learned to respect it,” she says, referencing annual Sundance ceremonies where communities gather to reaffirm spiritual beliefs.

“And I’ve calmed down more because as women we mature and I’m not in that place anymore. I want to show the beauty of our culture.”

The beauty — and the joy. You see this especially in Fontaine’s dresses. While the imagery of the red dress evokes missing and murdered Indigenous women, Fontaine’s dresses — in a riot of bright colours and prints — are not symbols of trauma, but of healing.

Healing is at the heart of the mixed-media medicine wheels that compose the more recent My Medicine series. Creating art, Fontaine says, is her medicine; many of these works were created in response to the news that one of her close family members is battling cancer.

Fontaine uses found objects — including wood cutouts and tiny metal charms from the Dollar Store — to create a hypnotic concentric patterns of flowers, butterflies, feathers and hearts on large wooden circles.

And, if you look closely, you’ll see that many of her medicine wheels quite literally sparkle, imbued with tiny gems and glitter.

“It’s a little-girl thing, the bling,” Fontaine says with a laugh.

Winyan is on view until Jan. 12, 2025.

jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com