ART GALLERY OF SUDBURY (Sudbury, Ontario)

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NAYAANO-NIBIIMAANG GICHIGAMIIN: THE FIVE GREAT LAKES
OCTOBER 26, 2016 – JANUARY 22, 2017

Nayaano-nibiimaang Gichigamiin: The Five Great Lakes presents a brand new series of Anishinaabe honouring blankets with mnemonic recounting blanket strips for each of the Five Great Lakes: the territory and homeland of the Anishinaabeg (Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi peoples). This textile work replicates traditional Great Lakes’ floral and geometric motifs, but they are made from reclaimed and salvaged electronic circuitry (capacitors, microchips, resistors, and diodes) that act as metaphors for cultural continuity (antithesis of stasis), bridging the past with the present and the future. The Hudson Bay trade blankets carry with them a longstanding narrative and response to colonization; acts of self-determination and a complicated economic trade history between the original peoples of the Great Lakes and newly arrived settlers, but these blankets also carry with them significant culture-based signs and semiotics. This body of work explores these aspects of the trade blanket.

The exhibition is further complimented by a generous loan of a recently gifted work by the artist to the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation, entitled Bandolier for M’Chigeeng. Ace’s contemporary animated Anishinaabe bandoliers are generously embellished works with complex bead and electronic component floral motifs. Embedded in the front of this bandolier bag is a new media digital tablet streaming the transformation of the sacred thunderbird and underwater panther, acknowledging the significance of cultural continuity of traditional knowledge and the on-going confluence between the historical and contemporary in Anishinaabeg culture.

More information of the Art Gallery of Sudbury website.

Press:

Art Gallery of Sudbury Press Release

Sudbury Star: Artist merges historical and contemporary

Sudbury Star: Art Gallery of Sudbury unveils two new exhibits tonight