EXHIBITION OPENINGS: Contemporary Indigenous art featured in local exhibitions

Our local arts venues have made the shift to in-person programming again and for the next two weekends, Indigenous artists feature prominently. Starting this Friday, Ottawa-based Anishinaabe artist (Odawa) Barry Ace will have his first solo show at Central Art Garage (CAG) focusing on materiality as “resurgance and surviance” for Indigenous artists. SAW Centre’s Nordic Lab will host its inaugural exhibition connecting artists (Sonya Kelliher-Combs, Maureen Gruben, Sissel M. Bergh) whose practice is situated in circumpolar regions. Next Saturday Inuk animation and intermedia artist Glenn Gear’sUllugialijack (Starry Night) will be projected at L’Imagier Art Centre in Alymer, Quebec. The work “explores systems of exchange, memory and Indigenous Futurism.”

CENTRAL ART GARAGE
Material Matters – Materiality of Anishiinaabeg-bimadizwin

Vernissage: Friday, November 19 from 6 – 10 pm | 66 B Lebreton St. N, Ottawa, Ontario

FROM CAG:

Central Art Garage is excited to present our first solo exhibition with acclaimed Anishinaabe (Odawa) artist Barry Ace.

For Ace, the focus on materiality can evoke a deeper understanding of the adverse impact of colonization on Anishinaabeg traditional knowledge and the current trend of resurgence and survivance.

In this hyper-digital and cyber-age of existence, we have become increasingly disconnected from our ability to fully experience and comprehend the mnemonic qualities of the hand-made and our ability to decipher the experientiality of its sensory and intellectual engagement. These works attempt to bridge this precipice between the material and immaterial realms and the historical and contemporary.

Exhibition continues until January

More info here.

ABOVE IMAGE SOURCE: Central Art Garage, Barry Ace “Symbols of Power and Resistance”

SAW CENTRE NORDIC LAB
ᐊᓚᒃᑳᔪᑦ Alakkaajut (Many Things Appear / Plusieurs choses apparaissent)

Vernissage: Friday, November 19 from 8 – 1 am | 67 Nicholas St, Ottawa, Ontario

FROM SAW:

Inaugural exhibition for the Nordic Lab, SAW’s new Indigenous-led research and production space with a focus on artists from the circumpolar world

• Sonya Kelliher-Combs (Anchorage, Alaska)
• Maureen Gruben (Tuktoyaktuk, NT)
• Sissel M. Bergh (Trondheim, Norway)

Curator: Taqralik Partridge (Ottawa)

The artists will be in attendance. Music by DJ Geronimo Inutiq (Winnipeg), Kathy Kettler (Ottawa) and Kendra Tagoona (Ottawa). Food prepared by Howard Adler (Ottawa)

Exhibition continues to March 5, 2022

More info here

ABOVE IMAGE SOURCE: SAW Centre, Sonya Kelliher-Combs

L’IMAGIER ART CENTRE
Ullugialijack (Starry Night) – Glenn Gear

Vernissage: Saturday, November 27 6-10 pm | 9 Front Street, Gatineau, Quebec

NOTE: The work will be presented outside at Parc de L’Imaginaire

FROM L’IMAGIER

Gear’s new artwork Ullugialijak (which translates as Starry Night) explores systems of exchange, memory and Indigenous Futurism: he builds and imagines worlds. In this new video work, rings of collected and gifted materials from the land and sea — bones, shells, caribou antler, driftwood, and beadwork — slowly rotate in concentric circles to create a vast interconnected universe.

Ullugialijak departs from conventional film practices with its circular composition. Gear’s previous work has explored portals, notions of returning home, and non-linear storytelling which transcend time and space — key features of Indigenous Futurisms. These explorations are encapsulated within Ullugialijak, with its circular composition that relates to Indigenous cyclical understanding of time and space through the ephemeral material left behind within an interconnected ecosystem.

Passers-by at the Parc de L’Imaginaire will be able to enjoy this nocturnal projection on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from November 27, 2021, to February 27, 2022, from 6 to 10 p.m.

More info here.

ABOVE IMAGE: Courtesy of L’Imagier Art Centre