Mystery photo weaves a tale of Nisga’a history in exhibition
Artist Krista Belle Stewart commissioned woven copy of enigmatic original
Motion and Moment Always, by Krista Belle Stewart
With Grace Schwindt’s Only A Free Individual Can Create a Free Society
To Feb. 15 | Contemporary Art Gallery, 555 Nelson St.
Info: contemporaryartgallery.ca
The black and white photograph at the entrance to the exhibition area looks small enough to fit into a family photo album. Neither backlit in a light box nor blown up to fill most of the wall, it’s in sharp contrast to the way most contemporary photography is displayed.
What helps give the photo presence is the bold red painted onto the wall that surrounds it at the Contemporary Art Gallery. It’s a colour that’s meant to be a close match to the colour on the inside of the Nisga’a Museum in Laxgalts'ap (Greenville) in northwestern B.C. As artist Krista Belle Stewart discovered, very little is known about the photograph. No one knows, for example, the names of the seven Nisga’a chiefs who are shown wearing traditional regalia. Another unknown is the figure third from the left with the pointed — and tallest — headdress. It’s not a man but a woman. The only problem is that the Nisga’a aren’t supposed to have female chiefs.
The photograph was taken in 1928 by Benjamin Haldane. He was a Tsimshian photographer who took photographs of aboriginal people in Alaska and northern B.C. in the early 20th century. But little is known about Haldane’s intentions as a photographer. As an indigenous person recording indigenous people, he was a rarity.
In the Nisga’a museum, the photograph has been enlarged and placed in a prominent position near the entrance. During a residency at the museum last fall, Stewart noticed the reproduced image was different from the original. In the museum’s copy on display, a man on the left has been cropped out. He’s the only one wearing western-style pants of the era.
Stewart believes she may have found out a little bit of information about the photograph. After Stewart’s time as artist-in-residence at the museum ended, an elder went into the museum to explain that she remembered the woman. The story goes that she was a powerful matriarch who became temporary chief until a younger male came of age.
Stewart, a member of the Upper Nicola Band of the Okanagan Nation, chose the line Motion and Moment Always as the title for her exhibition at the CAG. Taken from Ovid’s Metamorphosis, it’s meant to convey the flux and movement of history and time.
“I’m so curious about how we retell our stories,” Stewart said in a phone interview. “Our stories have a huge impact on how we think of our past. I’m very curious about the truth within stories and histories and how we document things.”
In part because of the connection between weaving and women among the Nisga’a, Stewart decided she wanted to see the image turned into a weaving. It was women who would have woven the regalia worn by the figures in the mysterious photograph. Stewart hired Vancouver weaver Ruth Scheuing to weave the image in wool using a Jacquard loom, a mechanical, programmable loom that dates back to the early 19th century.
“I asked her if she could recreate the whole photograph with the man that was missing,” Stewart said by phone.
“With her process, she started with the panel on the right. She was working her way left but when she got to the fourth panel, the loom broke. She couldn’t finish the last panel. He’s still cropped out of the image. It’s like he’s not meant to be reproduced.” (Stewart said eventually the additional panel with the missing man will be added.)
The weaving hangs on a wall in the exhibition space which has been painted the same bold red as the entrance area. Because the wool holding the image doesn’t lie flat like photographic paper, the image ripples as it follows the contours of the material. The uneven surface makes the image recognizable but slightly blurry. Its instability in a copy references the uncertainty and loss of cultural knowledge around the original photograph that Stewart has discovered.
Stewart has several other works in the installation at the Contemporary Art Gallery. They include Untitled (My Land, Red Plinth, Red My Mind), a seemingly banal bucket of dirt and clay on a plinth. But the dirt has significant meaning for Stewart: it’s dirt taken from the 20.2 hectares (50 acres) of land she inherited from her mother by Douglas Lake. Stewart packs the soil in a suitcase to take with her wherever she goes to keep her connected to her ancestral land. The video I Only Went Briefly Beyond and Now I Have Returned includes scenes of Stewart’s mother on the land her daughter inherited.
Also being shown at Contemporary Art Gallery until Feb. 15 is Grace Schwindt’s Only A Free Individual Can Create a Free Society, an 80-minute film being shown at 12 p.m., 1:30 p.m., 3 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.