2016 Festival ←

Group Exhibition CANADIAN BELONGING(s)

Art Gallery of Mississauga
Artists
  • Basil AlZeri
  • Sonny Assu
  • Pansee Atta
  • Cindy Blažević
  • Vanessa Dion Fletcher
  • Cheryl L’Hirondelle
  • Kristie MacDonald
  • Meryl McMaster
  • Abdi Osman
Basil AlZeri, #7 from The Postcard Project II, 2015, Archival Pigment Print, 4”x6”
Basil AlZeri, #7 from The Postcard Project II, 2015, Archival Pigment Print, 4”x6”
Sonny Assu, “You know the only thing more pathetic than Indians on T.V.? Indians watching Indians on T.V.!” from the series Interventions on the Imaginary, 2015, Digital Intervention on Painting, 20”x30”
Sonny Assu, “You know the only thing more pathetic than Indians on T.V.? Indians watching Indians on T.V.!” from the series Interventions on the Imaginary, 2015, Digital Intervention on Painting, 20”x30”
Vanessa Dion Fletcher, Relationship or Transaction, 2015, Archival Pigment Print, 33”x50”
Vanessa Dion Fletcher, Relationship or Transaction, 2015, Archival Pigment Print, 33”x50”

The country now known as Canada (Kanata) is home to people from many lands. Yet, its national imaginary is hardly reflective of this, as images of Canada—both within its borders and outside of them—continue to portray a country forged by British and French settlers. In contrast, the artists in CANADIAN BELONGING(s) demonstrate nuanced and complex examples of belonging, speaking back to dominant representations of national identity steeped in histories of settler-colonialism and white supremacy. With their own unique relationships to the nation-state, artists Basil AlZeri, Sonny Assu, Pansee Atta, Cindy Blažević, Vanessa Dion Fletcher, Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Kristie MacDonald, Meryl McMaster, and Abdi Osman demonstrate this specificity through distinct negotiations of material belongings. Through their use of the photograph and its function as documentation, a site for intervention, and an archive ripe for appropriation, the artists in CANADIAN BELONGING(s) make visible multiple understandings of the self through the presentation of specific objects of identification. Here, the postcard, passport, scrapbook, landscape, portrait, treaty, and wampum are all re-signified, subverting their settler-colonial function and, instead, evidencing distinct examples of belonging on this land.

Free shuttle bus to the May 5 opening reception departs from the Gladstone Hotel at 6pm, returns 8pm.

Curated by Ellyn Walker

Meryl McMaster (b. 1988) creates dreamlike photographic self-portraiture that crosses timescales, blending moments, lifetimes, generations, and geological eras. Drawing from her nēhiyaw (Plains Cree) and Euro-Canadian ancestry she constructs site-specific scenes with labour-intensive garments. McMaster’s work reinforces the intersections between actual and imagined experiences, in hopes of better understanding oneself, our histories, lineage and a more-than-human world. McMaster’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Urban Shaman, Winnipeg (2021), McCord Steward Museum, Montréal (2021), Canada House, London (2020), Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2019) and The Image Centre [Formerly Ryerson Image Centre], Toronto (2019). McMaster was shortlisted for the Rencontres d’Arles New Discovery Award (2019), was the recipient of the Scotiabank New Generation Photography Award (2018), REVEAL Indigenous Art Award (2017), and the Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship (2013).

Abdi Osman is a Somali-Canadian multidisciplinary artist and an assistant professor of practice at the University at Buffalo (SUNY). Osman’s work focuses on questions of Black masculinity as it intersects with Muslim and queer identities.

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