Art and activism earn national award

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This article was published 07/03/2021 (1684 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Having your life’s work acknowledged with national awards is nice and all, but it’s not why Lori Blondeau is an artist.

The Point Douglas resident is one of eight recipients of this year’s Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts. Each winner was selected by a peer committee and will receive $25,000 and a special-edition bronze medallion.

“I was a little shocked when I first found out,” Blondeau, 56, told The Times. “I just make art and that’s what I do.”

“I’m definitely honoured to have received it,” she added.

Blondeau is Cree/Saulteaux/Métis and moved from Saskatchewan to Winnipeg in 2018 to take on a teaching job at the University of Manitoba’s School of Art.

Throughout her career, Blondeau has created art to explore images and stereotypes of Indigenous women. But recently, she has immersed herself in rock art to tell stories of how her people’s monuments, such as medicine wheels, have been destroyed over time. “I’m just trying to retell that history so that it doesn’t get forgotten,” she said.

Blondeau explained she comes from a long line of artists and activists — her grandparents were artistic, and her mother spent the 1970s and ‘80s working with the Native Women’s Association, and her father at the Indian and Metis Friendship Centres.

“And, you know, they just fought for Indigenous rights,” she said. “I think that’s how they’ve influenced me.

“I think you can be an activist in different ways and different mediums and different jobs. And so I feel, because they were activists and really fought for Indigenous rights, that’s in some ways what I do through my visual art.

“As a performance artist, I use my own body to address contemporary issues.”

Blondeau was nominated for the award by Nasrin Himada, a curator at Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art on Portage Avenue, where Blondeau’s I’m Not Your Kinda Princess exhibit is being featured between March 11 and June 21.

“It’s kind of a survey show of my work over the last two-and-a-half decades in one gallery, and then the gallery commissioned me to do a new installation,” Blondeau explained.

Although she’s been working on the fresh piece for two years, she said it really came together over the last year as she drew inspiration from the pandemic.

To schedule an appointment to visit Blondeau’s exhibit at Plug In ICA, visit plugin.org