July 6, 2022

Winnipeg
19° C, Partly cloudy

Full Forecast

Contact Us Subscribe Manage Subscription Chat with us
Log in Create Free Account Help Chat with us
    • Contact Us
    • Advertising Contact
    • Submit a News Tip
    • Subscribe to Newsletters

    • Finding your
      information

    • My Account
    • Manage my Subscription
    • Change Password

    • Grid View
    • List View
    • Compact View
    • Text Size
    • Translate

    • Log Out
    • Log in
    • Create Free Account
    • Help

    • Grid View
    • List View
    • Compact View
    • Text Size
    • Translate
  • Coronavirus Coverage
  • Replica E-Edition
    • About the E-Edition
    • Winnipeg Free Press
    • Community Review East
    • Community Review West
  • Above the Fold
  • Front page
  • Arts & Life
    • All Arts & Life
    • The Arts
    • Autos
    • Books
    • Book Club
    • Cannabis
    • Celebrities
    • Diversions
    • Puzzles
    • Environment
    • Events
    • Faith
    • Food & Drink
    • Your Health
    • Life & Style
    • Movies
    • Music
    • Science & Technology
    • TV
    • Travel
  • Business
    • All Business
    • Agriculture
    • Personal Finance
    • Manitoba's Top Employers
  • Canada
  • Local
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Columnists
    • Editorials
    • Editorial Cartoons
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Send a Letter to the Editor
  • Sports
    • All Sports
    • Amateur
    • Auto Racing
    • Blue Bombers
    • Curling
    • Football
    • Goldeyes
    • Golf
    • High School
    • Hockey
    • Horse Racing
    • Winnipeg Jets
    • Manitoba Moose
    • WHL
    • MLB
    • NBA
    • Olympics
    • Soccer
  • World
  • Reader BridgeNEW
  • WFP EventsNEW
  • About Us
    • About Us
    • Advertising
    • Contact Us
    • Carrier Positions & Retailer Requests
    • FP Newspapers Inc.
    • History
    • Internships
    • Job Opportunities
    • News Café
    • Privacy Policy
    • Retail Locations
    • Staff Biographies
    • Terms and Conditions
  • Archives
  • Free Press Community Review
    • All Free Press Community Review News
    • East Edition
    • West Edition
    • Sports
    • Events
    • Contact Us
    • E-Editions
  • Classifieds
  • Contests
  • Coupons
    • All Coupons
    • Staples Copy & Print Coupons
    • Ripley's Aquariums Coupons
    • The Bay Coupons
    • Staples Canada Coupons
    • Altitude Sports Coupons
    • Nike Coupons
    • Tuango Coupons
    • Ebay Canada Coupons
    • Sport Chek Coupons
    • Roots Coupons
  • LifestylesNEW
    • All Lifestyles
    • Business Hub
    • Community
    • Drink & Dine
    • Life
    • Wellness
    • Whiskers & Wings
    • Sponsored Articles
  • Homes
    • Property Listings
    • Featured News
    • Renovation and design
    • New homes
    • Resale homes
  • Newsletters
  • Obituaries
  • Puzzles
  • Photo and Book store
  • More

©2022 FP Newspaper Inc.

Close
  • Quick Links

    • Coronavirus Coverage
    • Federal Election
    • Above the Fold
    • Home
    • Local
    • Canada
    • World
    • Classifieds
    • Special Coverage
    • Newsletters
    • Obituaries
    • Photo and Book store
    • Archives
    • Contests
    • Publications
    • Sponsored Content
    • Privacy Policy

    Ways to support us

    • Pay it Forward program
    • Subscribe
    • Support Faith coverage
    • Support Arts coverage
  • Replica E-Edition

    • About the E-Edition
    • Winnipeg Free Press
    • Community Review East
    • Community Review West

    Business

    • All Business
    • Agriculture
    • Personal Finance
  • Arts & Life

    • All Arts & Life
    • The Arts
    • Autos
    • Books
    • Cannabis
    • Celebrities
    • Diversions
    • Puzzles
    • Environment
    • Events
    • Faith
    • Food & Drink
    • Your Health
    • Life & Style
    • Movies
    • Music
    • Science & Technology
    • TV
    • Travel
  • Sports

    • All Sports
    • Amateur
    • Auto Racing
    • Blue Bombers
    • Curling
    • Football
    • Goldeyes
    • Golf
    • High School
    • Hockey
    • Horse Racing
    • Winnipeg Jets
    • Manitoba Moose
    • WHL
    • MLB
    • NBA
    • Olympics
    • Soccer
  • Opinion

    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Columnists
    • Editorials
    • Editorial Cartoons
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Send a Letter to the Editor

    Media

    • All Media
    • Photo Galleries
    • Videos

    Homes

    • Property Listings
    • Featured News
    • Renovation and design
    • New homes
    • Resale homes
  • Canstar Community News

    • All Free Press Community Review News
    • East Edition
    • West Edition
    • Sports
    • Events
    • Contact Us
    • E-Editions
  • Coupons

    • All Coupons
    • Staples Copy & Print Coupons
    • Ripley's Aquariums Coupons
    • The Bay Coupons
    • Staples Canada Coupons
    • Altitude Sports Coupons
    • Nike Coupons
    • Tuango Coupons
    • Ebay Canada Coupons
    • Sport Chek Coupons
    • Roots Coupons
  • About Us

    • About Us
    • Advertising
    • Contact Us
    • Carrier Positions & Retailer Requests
    • FP Newspapers Inc.
    • History
    • Internships
    • Job Opportunities
    • News Café
    • Privacy Policy
    • Retail Locations
    • Staff Biographies
    • Terms and Conditions
The Free Press
Articles Read
Your Balance +tax
Day Pass Till
Day Pass
    • Contact Us
    • Advertising Contact
    • Report an Error
    • Send a Letter to the Editor
    • Staff Biographies
    • Submit a News Tip
    • Subscribe to Newsletters

    • Finding your
      information

    • Log in
    • Create Account
    • Help
    • Chat with us

    • Grid View
    • List View
    • Compact View
    • Text Size
    • Translate
    • My Account
    • Manage My Subscription
    • Change Password
    • Chat with us

    • Grid View
    • List View
    • Compact View
    • Text Size
    • Translate

    • Log Out
Log in Create Account Contact Us
Contact Us Manage Subscription
  • Sections
  • Local
  • Arts & Life
    • All Arts & Life
    • The Arts
    • Autos
    • Books
    • Diversions
    • Environment
    • Faith
    • Food & Drink
    • Health
    • Movies
    • Music
    • TV
    • Travel
  • Business
    • All Business
    • Agriculture
    • Personal Finance
    • Manitoba's Top Employers
  • Sports
    • All Sports
    • Amateur
    • Blue Bombers
    • Curling
    • Football
    • Goldeyes
    • High School
    • Hockey
    • Winnipeg Jets
    • Manitoba Moose
    • WHL
    • MLB
    • NBA
    • Soccer
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Columnists
    • Editorials
    • Editorial Cartoons
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Send a Letter to the Editor
  • E-Edition
  • Homes
  • Classifieds
    • All Classifieds
    • Announcements
    • Automotive
    • Careers
    • Garage Sales
    • Merchandise
    • Pets
    • Real Estate
    • Rentals
    • Services
  • Lifestyles
    • Business Hub
    • Community
    • Drink & Dine
    • Life
    • Manitoba’s Top Employers
    • Wellness
    • Whiskers & Wings
    • Sponsored Articles
  • Coupons
    • All Coupons
    • Staples Copy & Print
    • Ripley's Aquariums
    • The Bay
    • Staples Canada
    • Altitude Sports
    • Nike
    • Tuango
    • Ebay Canada
    • Sport Chek
    • Roots
  • Obituaries
  • Subscribe$1.50 for 5 months
Home Opinion Columnists

Advertisement

Advertise With Us

#Decolonize2014: Boundary-defying exhibitions by indigenous artists help define art in Winnipeg this year

By: Steven Leyden Cochrane
Posted: 2:02 AM CST Thursday, Dec. 18, 2014

  • Tweet
  • Share
  • Print
  • Email
  • Save to Read Later

The most powerful experience I had in a gallery this year wasn't at a typical art show.

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/12/2014 (2757 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Opinion

The most powerful experience I had in a gallery this year wasn't at a typical art show.

A travelling memorial to missing and murdered indigenous women, Walking With Our Sisters made its Winnipeg stop at Urban Shaman in March. More than 800 carefully arranged pairs of unfinished, hand-embellished moccasins gave concrete presence to an ongoing crisis that many would rather view abstractly -- too often with deadly consequences.

Theresa Burrows’ contribution to Walking With Our Sisters.

Theresa Burrows’ contribution to Walking With Our Sisters.

A hub of community and volunteer activity, music, ceremony, shared grief and celebration, Walking With Our Sisters, like the broader Idle No More movement, erased divisions between contemporary art, activism and cultural identity, affirming art's crucial place at the nexus of historical reckoning and forward momentum. That same urgency and disregard for boundaries characterized important travelling surveys and local exhibitions by indigenous artists that helped define and distinguish art in Winnipeg this year.

One example -- 7: Professional Native Indian Artists Inc., which ran all summer at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, assembled a tremendous variety of historically and artistically groundbreaking work, examining critical years in the 1970s when the Winnipeg-centred group of painters first solidified their unique, indigenous approaches to modernist innovation.

On view into January at Plug In, Saskatchewan artist Ruth Cuthand's incendiary 30-year retrospective Back Talk picks up in the 1980s, spanning painting, drawing, video, digital art and Cuthand's subversive take on traditional beadwork. With piercing humour and blunt force she "talks back" to racist expectations, historical trauma and her own lived experiences. Running concurrently, Minneapolis-based Andrea Carlson's Eat-All presents a more fractured approach to issues of representation, exploitation and exchange. Her meticulously rendered seascapes, post-apocalyptic vistas strewn with washed-up museum artifacts, are some of the most complex and accomplished drawings I can recall seeing this or any other year.

The Free Press | Newsletter

Applause

A weekly review of the Winnipeg arts scene, delivered every Thursday.

Sign up for Applause
Sign Up
Station to Station by Raymond Boisjoly.

Station to Station by Raymond Boisjoly.

Looking back, other highlights include projects by Raymond Boisjoly at Platform Centre and Urban Shaman this April. The Vancouver-based artist creatively misused contemporary technology ("lossy," highly compressed YouTube footage, flatbed scanners and iPad screens) to deconstruct and remake media representations of newly urban indigenous people in the early 1960s.

Installed at Gurevich Fine Art in September, Caroline Monnet's Amik(waa) reimagined an Algonquin ceremonial lodge as minimalist sculpture, a black Plexiglas prism lashed together with copper wire casting kaleidoscopic reflections of ghostly video amidst an immersive natural soundscape. A beautifully curated group show at Urban, also in September, Memory Keepers showcased similar hybrid approaches. Artists Julie Nagam, Tanya Lukin-Linklater and Ursula Johnson each freely drew from traditional architecture, video installation, contemporary dance, basket-weaving and performance art to create evocative meditations on identity and place.

A few weeks ago, Urban assembled a panel to discuss the legacy of new media artist Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskwew, who died in 2006, and share efforts to preserve early examples of indigenous Net-art. Low-resolution graphics, dead links and antiquated web design mean much of that pioneering work is already showing signs of age, but it boundary-testing futurism and embodiment of democratic ideals couldn't be more relevant in a contemporary landscape of hashtags and social media.

The talk was an important reminder that powerful experiences of art can take place outside the gallery, but a year's worth of transformative exhibitions proves it's still not a bad place to start. I'll see you in January. #Decolonize2015 #IdleNoMore

 

Steven Leyden Cochrane is a Winnipeg-based artist, writer and educator.

Work from Andrea Carlson's Eat-All.

Work from Andrea Carlson's Eat-All.

Advertisement

Advertise With Us

  • Report Error
  • Submit a Tip
  • Refund
  • The Free Press is certified by

The Winnipeg Free Press invites you to share your opinion on this story in a letter to the editor. A selection of letters to the editor are published daily.

To submit a letter:
• fill out the form on this page, or
• email letters@freepress.mb.ca, or
• mail Letters to the Editor, 1355 Mountain Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R2X 3B6.

Letters must include the writer’s full name, address, and a daytime phone number. Letters are edited for length and clarity.

Advertisement

Advertise With Us

Top