Indigenous art finds a champion
Growing up on the Red Pheasant First Nation, Gerald McMaster liked to draw — he was an avid comic book reader — and he was good it. But it didn’t excite him, not the way sports did. He excelled in softball and saw himself maybe getting a phys-ed degree some day.
And yet today, he’s a professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design University in Toronto.
He’s also the newly named adjunct curator at Remai Modern, which will tap into his expertise in contemporary Indigenous art to design programs.
The position doesn’t entail a move back to his home province, but he did visit this week and spared some time to talk about his new role and early influences.
McMaster says he didn’t know what Indigenous art was until he got a job for a year after high school with the Saskatchewan Indian Cultural College in Saskatoon. Working under Sarain Stump, he helped develop and launch an art program for Indigenous students.
“It brought a whole new world to me. (Stump) understood the historical art of Indigenous people in Canada, the U.S. and Latin American countries. I thought that was very exciting.”
Putting away his ball and bat, McMaster was accepted into the Institute of American Indian Art in Santa Fe, N.M. He was lonely being so far from home but excited to meet fellow Indigenous students.
“Once I got entangled in this new way of seeing the world, this is where I wanted to go,” he says.
After earning his fine arts degree from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, McMaster got at job at the University of Regina with the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College to design an Indigenous art program.
“I guess that’s where all this interest in the field of art and Indigenous art came from, because I felt there was a way, perhaps, of giving the soul back to our people through the arts. And I’ve been at it ever since.”
McMaster is pleased to see the progress that’s been made over the past two decades, the change in attitude from Indigenous art being seen as merely historical and confined to the “glass box” of a museum to something that’s alive and culturally empowering.
“By the 2000s, all of a sudden you see new waves of young, Indigenous artists who are dynamic and brilliant. They’re going to art schools, they ’re exhibiting around the world, there’s collaborations with Australians, New Zealanders, they are experimenting with new media, performance art, spoken word, rap. It’s been quite exciting to see.”
Ultimately, this work might not be considered Indigenous art, just art, he says.
“I think part of my work is to help create a program in which Indigenous artists are part of the network here, maybe to the eventual thought that we’ll no longer think of Indigenous as ‘other.’ All of a sudden, the majority is no longer the majority.”
While in Saskatoon, McMaster was also scheduled to give a talk related to the Remai’s current exhibit on Jimmie Durham: At the Center of the World.