creative forces

Blog # 71…July 2017

I’ve noticed, maybe you have too, how many blogs I’ve devoted to art and indigenous people.  The relations between us, both past and present compete with climate change to be at the top of my personal list of stuff that absorbs me. Thought I’d switch it up and do something else this time…but guess what, not gonna do it (remember Dana Carvey doing GW?…and that reminds me, a major digression here, I'm loving Al Franken’s book, Giant of the Senate).  But back to blogging…

I was lucky to be in Ottawa recently, the jazz festival, Canada Day - people wearing red maple leaf shirts over their saris and caribou antlers on top of turbans…all of us crowding together, mostly happily, to huddle under umbrellas and jump over muddy bits.

What struck me most though, was time spent in the new gallery of Canadian and Indigenous Art at the NAC. I’m not sure about the name of the gallery, which seems to imply that indigenous art is separate rather than part of Canadian art. On the other hand, and probably what the curators were thinking, it features and dignifies indigenous art which has historically been relegated to folk arts and crafts. Whatever its name, the gallery succeeds in telling a new story about art in Canada.

A caption attributed to Louis Riel reads, “My people will sleep for 100 years but when they awake, it will be the artists who give them their spirits back.” Voices and images from Kent Monkman, Rebecca Belmore, Alex Janvier and  Daphne Odjig  call our attention to indigenous life’s  joys and sorrows, balancing and enriching our own view of our history.

Daphne Odjig was born on Manitoulin Island in 1919 and died in 2016 - that's right she was 97.  A member of the Indian Group of Seven (take a look at Blog # 48) her many accomplishments and
honours include being chosen as one of 4 international artists to paint an homage to Pablo Picasso for the Picasso Museum in Antibes and being commissioned by El Al Airlines to create The Jerusalem Series.   There’s a rich collection of her work to see online; I was particularly touched by a piece from 1975 titled Mother Earth Struggles for Survival.

With the giant slice that broke away from the Larsen C ice shelf recently another alarm bell sounds, echoing Daphne’s concern from more than four decades ago, As well as informing our past, indigenous artists warn us about the future.  “Alarming messages can be paralyzing and counter-productive” writes my favourite Elizabeth Renzetti.  And she in turn quotes George Marshall, whose book Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change, who says that a more positive way to mobilize people may be what he calls “a narrative of positive change.” He describes this as telling compelling stories about how people can come together in pursuit of a more just, equal and not so sweltering planet.

I’ll leave you to think about that and about our Iraqi refugees who arrive in Toronto next Tuesday morning.  It’s been a long wait for them and will be a steep learning curve for all of us.