Group Exhibition Materialized

Combining portrait photography with elements from adornment arts, textiles, sculpture, and customary Indigenous art practices, Materialized examines themes of intergenerational memory, familial narrative, and decolonization through the work of artists Joi T. Arcand, Celeste Pedri-Spade, Catherine Blackburn, and Nadya Kwandibens. By using their craft to reclaim portraiture as a form of self-expression and self-determination, each artist resists the colonial metanarratives contained in settler-made images of Indigenous subjects.

Portraiture aims to capture the essence of a subject, to act as a visual representation of a subject’s personality, and to tell a story to an audience about a subject’s purported identity. The art form also has a long and problematic history of Indigenous subjects being objectified, exploited, and misrepresented by white settler photographers for commercial and anthropological purposes, informing racist representations and acting as a tool for colonial nation-building. In response, contemporary Indigenous artists working with photography turn the tables, taking back their own images and cultures, using the powerful medium to resist oppressive instrumentalization.

The artists in Materialized build on this process of reclamation and resistance. They achieve this by putting photographs through a time-intensive and meticulous process of materialization, transforming them by hand using beadwork, dioramic tableau, and sewing. This materialization acts as a form of reflexivity—a kind of visual autoethnographic research that examines Indigenous self-identity, exploring the intersections between the artists’ personal experiences and those of their families, their communities, and beyond.

 Lac des Mille Lacs First Nation artist Celeste Pedri-Spade, whose artistic and scholarly contributions served as a source of inspiration for this exhibition, states:

“…materializing the photographs led me towards not only the recovery of memory, but also a discovery of a new understanding or appreciation for the memory itself. This illustrates, how, dialectically, we both produce and are products of historical processes…As an Anishinabekwe artist/researcher I have often longed for this tactile dimension of history, inspired by the words of my kitchianishinabeg that would often discuss how we wear our teachings, that we live our knowledge…”[1]

Pedri-Spade’s works in the exhibition include Ogjchidaakwewag (2016), a quilt featuring three family members photographed in the late 1960s, with the appliqued outlines of their bodies evoking the topography of Pedri-Spade’s home territory. In Anishinabe culture, blankets are given to honour individuals through ceremony, and with this work Pedri-Spade honours and acknowledges how the women in her family continue to protect the waters now known as Kashabowie Lake in northwestern Ontario. Other works by Pedri-Spade include regalia and ceremonial items, such as the jingle dress Roses (2014), and Shirley’s Tobacco Bag (2014)—a brain-tanned moose-hide bag featuring a beaded portrait of her grandmother.

English River First Nation artist Catherine Blackburn’s works me, us, ee, and tti are part of a visceral series titled Our Mother(s) Tongue (2017), in which syllabics and floral motifs are beaded onto close-up photographs of the tongues of Blackburn’s family members. These evocative works speak directly to the loss of Indigenous languages as a result of genocidal assimilation policies such as Canada’s Indian Residential School System, as well as the vital importance of Indigenous language revitalization as an act of decolonization. The Indigenous body itself—represented here by the tongue—becomes a sovereign site of resurgence and power. Familial knowledge and the power of intergenerational healing are embodied in the series, as Blackburn’s own mother helped with the Dene translation.

In Joi T. Arcand’s Through That Which Is Scene (2014), the Muskeg Lake First Nation artist investigates the influence of photographs on memory and how familial narratives engage with the construction of self. Arcand makes use of cutouts from family photographs, toys, doll furniture, and other ephemera to create whimsical dioramas. Accompanying the dioramas are two vintage stereoscopic View-Masters, each loaded with reels of narrative tableaus constructed by the artist, made for visitors to engage with.

As a satellite component of this indoor exhibition, Animakee Wa Zhing #37 First Nation Artist—and recently appointed Toronto Photo Laureate—Nadya Kwandibens’ photograph Shiibaashka’igan: Honouring the Sacred Jingle Dress (2019) is presented on a public billboard located outside Artscape Youngplace at 180 Shaw Street. Read more here about how it further explores the themes of the exhibition.

Through their multifaceted practices, the artists in Materialized individually and collectively raise and unpack crucial questions about photography: How can photographs—both archival and contemporary—support personal and familial histories? And how can these same photographs act as the basis for social, political, and conceptual explorations of Indigenous identity when they are put through a process of physical materialization?

[1] Celeste Pedri-Spade, “The day my photographs danced: Materializing photographs of my Anishinabe ancestors,” Visual ethnography, 6(1) (2017): 133–72.

Curated by Ariel Smith.
Smith is an award winning nêhiyaw, white settler and Jewish filmmaker, video artist, writer, and cultural worker. Having created independent media art since 2001, she has shown at festivals and galleries across Canada and Internationally. Ariel has worked as a programmer/curator for such organizations as galerie saw gallery, The Ottawa International Animation Festival, Reel Canada, imagineNATIVE, Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre, and the National Gallery of Canada. Ariel works as the Artistic and Managing Director of Native Women in the Arts and is in the process of completing an MFA in Film Production from York University.

Co-presented by Native Women in the Arts and Critical Distance Centre for Curators, in partnership with CONTACT