Majestic murals

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/01/2020 (2135 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There are many images of women in public places in our city, large photographs of models promoting products with their beauty and allure. But what about images of women being celebrated just for being women, doing interesting and important things, young, grown-up and old?

To be sure, there are all those titillating pubescent girls with pert nipples in the lavish sculpture garden at Assiniboine Park, perched mindlessly next to fully clothed men showcasing their public roles as community leaders or workers. (Ummm, can we have a public discussion about that sometime?)

There is the worried Scottish mother accompanying her family in the stressful adventure of arriving in a new country, an elegant bronze sculpture on Waterfront Drive commemorating the arrival of the Selkirk Settlers in the early 1800s. Her husband and adolescent son are looking forward to what the new life in a new land may bring. She is holding her baby tightly and looking back, sorrowing over what has been lost.

The sculpture was sponsored by the St. Andrews Society of Winnipeg, and created by Scottish artist Gerald Laing in 2010. Did you know there’s an identical sculpture to this one in Helmsdale, Scotland? Together they represent an iconic remembrance by both Scotland and Canada, of the violent and traumatic displacements and relocations involved for Scottish (and many other) immigrants arriving on the shores of Turtle Island in the hope of building a new life here.

Recently we’ve seen the emergence of several public murals downtown depicting women’s faces and lives, painted by local, national and international Indigenous artists. They are part of Synonym Art Consultation’s downtown Wall-to-Wall public art project, headed by the enormously talented Andrew Eastman and Chloe Chafe, in collaboration with Graffiti Art Programming and local co-sponsoring organizations.

These murals are often painted in what we could call a nouveau-traditional Indigenous style.

I should note there was a previous citywide public wall mural project, beginning in the mid-1990s, overseen by Take Pride Winnipeg! Many of those murals were painted by young people, working in their own neighourhoods, in many different styles and in a wide range of subjects. The Murals of Winnipeg website lists thousands of pieces of art all over our city now. Astonishing! Wonderful!

I’m sure you agree that the murals have brightened the face of our city in delightful and inspiring, and sometimes wonky, ways.

Let me highlight briefly my favourite downtown Synonym-curated murals, celebrating the faces and complex lives of contemporary Indigenous (and other) women.

Mending, a 50-foot-tall mural on the high wall of Winnipeg Centre Vineyard Church, on Main Street just north of the Higgins underpass, depicts the head and shoulders of a black-haired Indigenous woman, wearing a bright-coloured shawl, handwoven in the Mayan style, with a hat crowned with a row of tiny visionary muskoxen of the North. Her shining hair is braided and woven with eagle feathers.

She is facing us, but her eyes are looking down at the pink beating “torn heart” she holds in her hands. She’s the visionary Mother of Turtle Island, she is Turtle Island. She looks down at us as we enter the legendary North End, with love, strength, sorrow and beauty. I catch my breath in gratitude and wonder every time I see her there.

Mending was created by the Montreal-based Indigenous Chilean-Canadian artistic duo The Clandestinos, Shalak Attack and Bruno Smoky, in 2016. The crown of muskoxen, they say, represents a circle of protection for Mother Earth, as she works to mend the broken hearts of her many children, and to recover the broken health of her own sacred earth body.

Another gorgeous, eloquent mural featuring a beautiful Indigenous woman’s face, with flowers in her indigo hair, untethered, can be found directly across Main Street, on the south wall of the Sutherland Hotel. From her tresses flows a crimson river of blood, unfurling across the sky blue brick wall, in a startling display of both life-giving power and suffering. Poetry shimmers across this river in opaque white letters:

is it my blood that makes me wonder?

the bones of my ancestors

how they pull on me offering so many directions

— Jónína Kirton

Kirton is a Canadian-Métisse-Icelandic poet, with roots in Manitoba, currently living in “unceded Salish territory” in B.C. These lines belong to a longer poem, untethered.

The unforgettable images framing the words were created by Winnipeg artist Jan Castillo, who also crafts exquisite handmade leather goods in his local Red Herring studio.

untethered (2017) was curated in collaboration with núna (now), an international artists exchange program between Iceland and Canada. Patrons of the Sutherland Hotel bar often step out onto the sidewalk underneath the mural for fresh air and smokes.

The air fills with country music from the jukeboxes inside, as this beautiful woman looks down on them from the wall above, singing — or is it wailing — her poetic words.

Nibaa (or “Sleep” in Ojibwe) is the name of the striking mural on the north side of the Public Safety Building parkade, on James Street, just north of city hall. It was created by local artist Mike Valcourt in 2017.

The mural features a powerful, beautiful Indigenous woman’s face, with flowers and tree branches in her hair.

Valcourt works with subtle shading, rare in wall murals of this kind. We see the shadow of a hand laid across her mouth, and a bright blue band of sorrow on her cheek. A shadowy skull presses against her neck.

Behind her, toward the east, we see the shadowy outlines of dozens of spirit women, who grow larger as they meet and “become” her. She is looking westward, over a trail of spirit bison, receding in the distance. The missing and murdered women have been transformed, and set free.

The mural is a triumph of elegant admiration and celebration, in the face of the sorrowful remembrance of tragedy, and has much to teach us all about the nature of grief and healing and hope.

The Public Safety Building parkade is slated for demolition this month. The Montreal firm of Daoust Lestage has been contracted to develop a “new market square” on this valuable downtown land soon after.

Valcourt and Synonym Art knew about the planned demolition when they created the mural. So its planned destruction is integral to the work, adding complex layers of meaning to the imagery.

They hope to document the demolition of the building and its eloquent mural art on the north side for permanent archival viewing. Go see it in its wall incarnation while you can.

Di Brandt is Winnipeg’s inaugural poet laureate (2018-19).