WORKS WEAVE TOGETHER
Ashley Martin highlights five of the artworks included in the exhibit Carry Forward, which opens Friday, Nov. 9, at the Dunlop Art Gallery.
DANA CLAXTON — AIM 3 AND 4 (2010)
Two enlarged photo reproductions are at the entrance of the exhibition. Yorkton-born Dana Claxton photographed these microfiche slides of two FBI documents about surveilling members of the American Indian Movement in the 1970s.
“These show that the FBI was taking this movement, kind of criminalizing it and identifying it as a threat to the nation. But a lot of it’s redacted,” said curator Lisa Myers.
MAIKA’I TUBBS — WRITTEN IN STONE (2016)
This piece resembles 12 rocks in a circle until you look closer. The material is “found books,” which people discarded in Brooklyn, where Maika’i Tubbs lives. It’s a testament to electronic books replacing printed ones. The artist created a pulp from the paper to give each piece a rock-like texture.
“Seemingly worn, weathered and shaped into fossilized forms, these books tell the story of a past that revered the permanence of the printed word,” Myers wrote in the label that accompanies the piece.
KRISTA BELLE STEWART — SIM – REAL / VERY (2015)
This image shows the “negative” side of the piece, which is a woven replica of an archival photo displayed in the Nisga’a Museum in B.C., where the artist worked.
“Every day she’d walk past this photograph, which was on display, and when she found the original print there was an extra person (on the end),” Myers explained.
The ones in the 1903 photo wear traditional Nisga’a garb, while the excluded person wears Western-style clothing.
“The weaving machine actually broke down,” cutting the person off from the jacquard weaving, too.
MARIA THEREZA ALVES — BOUGAINVILLEA (2009)
This watercolour painting of a flower represents a message of colonization.
“She talks about how the bougainvillea was originally from Brazil, but she saw it in Senegal and she thought about the way the flower travelled from Brazil to Africa,” Myers said of the artist. “What she writes about is the trans-atlantic slave trade and how Senegal was a centre of where a lot of enslaved people, enslaved Africans, were transported across to Brazil to be enslaved for these different plantations.”
BRENDADRANEY— UNTITLED (2016)
Three watercolour-painted scrolls make up this piece, memories of Brenda Draney’s childhood in Slave Lake, Alta.
“Her approach is very minimal, a kind of sparse handling of imagery that references story,” said Myers. “And also she works from memory, so when the memory stops, she stops painting. That’s why you get these pieces that are very spaced … And she doesn’t just tell you the story either, she lets you kind of fill in the story.”