ONLY CANADIAN SHOW
gregory burke, remai modern CEO, checks out the gallery’s first major exhibit, jimmie durham: at the centre of the world, A retrospective featuring 175 pieces by the controversial u.s. artist. this is the only canadian stop for the exhibit, which explores
American curator Anne Ellegood says she’s “really curious” to see how a Canadian audience reacts to a new exhibit opening at the Remai Modern this weekend.
The lone Canadian showing of Jimmie Durham: At the Centre of the World will be on display at the Remai Modern from March 25 to Aug. 5. The exhibition, a career retrospective of American artist Jimmie Durham, made its debut at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles early last year and has also been shown at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.
Nearly 175 pieces of work — which Durham created between 1970 and 2016 — tackle subjects such as colonization, genocide and what it means to be a citizen of the world.
“The level of conversation in Canada around these issues and the histories of genocide and the reckoning that we all need to face in reconciling those histories is so much more active and visible in Canada. And, in the U.S., we’re very far from being anywhere close to really engaging in the type of political activities that are happening here,” Ellegood said.
“Here in Canada I feel that people are, in many ways, just more aware and just more well-versed and, frankly, more engaged with those topics. And Saskatoon maybe in particular.”
Durham self-identifies as Cherokee, but questions have been raised about his heritage for decades because he does not belong to any of the federally recognized Cherokee tribes in the United States. Ellegood said those questions have intensified since Durham’s retrospective was put together — something she says has been “very difficult and painful” for the artist.
She said Durham was raised to believe he is Cherokee and has been extensively involved with the American Indian Movement and the International Indian Treaty Council.
“I think we owe Jimmie a process of thinking through what his skepticisms are about tribal enrolment and various activities that have occurred in the U.S. to try to understand the position that he’s taken,” Ellegood said.
She said she’s concerned that questions around Durham’s Cherokee identity could colour people’s impressions of the exhibition, which would do the work a disservice.
“I think Jimmie’s work stands on its own in every way, but I think that artists’ backgrounds and artists’ identities and artists’ personal biographies and histories are always on people’s minds as they go through a retrospective like this. It’s impossible not to,” she said.
Ellegood said Durham liked to think of himself as a “citizen of the world,” someone who could not be categorized or defined. “He doesn’t want his work to be understood only through the lens of being an American Indian artist,” she said. “I think to look at it only through that lens is to kind of go against his ideology and also it sort of limits it.”
Ellegood, the curator for the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, is in Saskatoon this week for the launch of the exhibition. She is scheduled to give a talk about Durham at the gallery Sunday at 2 p.m.
Durham, who is now in his late 70s, lives in Europe and splits his time between Berlin and Naples. He is not expected to travel to Saskatoon.