Ininige examines the work of five contemporary women artists each of whom carry knowledge, memory and skills developed across time and through their art practice. They may be carrying skills learned at a young age, holding the vestige of a love of textiles and patterning from childhood; skills acquired in an academic or group setting; or skills that carry forward from life experience. Each artist is looking backwards and forwards in time – they are relearning and bringing forward material, cultural, and artistic practices, relearning, and teaching these art practices to others –inter-generationally or peer-to-peer. And, they are working in a variety of media as they explore culture, identity, and memory, often as these elements are held in the body.
What does it mean to hold something?
What do we hold from the past that carries us into the future?
The Anishinaabemowin, ininige is a transitive verb meaning, “s/he holds, handles things a certain way; s/he points in a certain direction.” In the English language this word ‘hold’, can be associated as a verb with various adverbs –to hold on, hold to, hold out, hold in – there is also to hold hands, to hold something or someone.
These action words are based in both knowing the past and retaining knowledge/ something for the future. Both are actions that resonates across time. In Anishinaabemowin there is another transitive verb, gashkin or gashkinan that means, ‘to be able to hold, lift, carry it.’
In one of the early stages of thinking through the curatorial thematic for this exhibition – the idea of Indigenous Futurisms was floated. Anishinaabe cultural critic, Grace Dillon first wrote of “Indigenous Futurisms”, in her book, Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction (2003). She was actively thinking through perspectives on narrative – in science fiction but also in speculative story-telling and as an imagining of all artistic forms and creativity in order to imagine and visualize all the possible futures for Indigenous people.
From this, there are many ways to consider this genre, but I have come to the idea of Indigenous Futurisms as the way we look to the future – as women, daughters, sisters, mothers, carers, grandmothers by looking both backwards and forward.
I am appreciative of the words of Michi Saagiig Anishinaabe scholar, writer, and author Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, who writes in As We Have Always Done, “The idea of my arms encircling my grandchildren, and their arms embracing their grandchildren is communicated in the Nishinaabeg word, kobade. According to Elder, Edna Manitowabi, kobade is a word we use to refer to our great-grandparents and our great-grandchildren. It means a link in a chain – a link in a chain between generations, between Nations, between states of being, between individuals.”
In this exhibition, these five artists are holding on to one another across generational paths. They are making art that is a transference of influences, knowledge, and techniques. One generation is taking up from the past, holding, building, and carrying into the future.
These five artists - Shelley Niro, Alice Williams, Sandra (Sam) Moore, Dehmin Osawamick Cleland, and Teresa _____________________ - are part of a continuum, some with Artspace itself, and others with the Michi Saagiig territory that Artspace is on and others taking up the mantle of those who have gone before as they move into the future. It is generational and it is a reinforcement of strength.
Shelley Niro and Alice Williams, both established artists, are among the first Indigenous artists to have exhibited at Artspace. In 1997, Niro was one of the artists in Native Love, a group exhibition that the Nation to Nation collective toured across the country. Williams’ textile work has been shown at Artspace, in solo exhibitions, at different points from the late 1990s onwards. Sandra (Sam) Moore is a community-based artist and pedagogue who is responsible in many ways for the revitalization of traditional arts, such as porcupine quillwork, tufting, hide and fish tanning and pine needle work on her home territory. Dehmin Osawamick Cleland is an emerging Anishinaabe-kwe artist whose work while planted in the present looks both to the past and forward to an Indigenous future that is strengthened through sovereignty.
This exhibition brings together artists who each incorporate the knowledges they have been taught. Through their practices they have built relationships that hold them, that they use as a means to carry their knowledge across the generations. They know the histories and have developed strong and sustaining relationships with the land, their materials, and the people. Each artist explores their identity through their own connection to territory, the land, family, stories and history, culture, language/ song, community, and memory. Each in their own way tells stories of reclamation and continuity by looking both backwards and forward to the future.
Artists and Bios:
Shelley Niro is a multidisciplinary contemporary artist skilled in photography, painting, sculpting, beadwork, multimedia, and independent film, Niro is a member of the Turtle clan of the Kanienkehaka (Mohawk Nation) from Six Nations of the Grand River. Shelley Niro was born in Niagara Falls, New York and grew up on the Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve, near Brantford, Ontario, Canada. Her contemporary Indigenous perspective is based upon traditional knowledge; her sense of community and a colonial critique that is re-contextualized through matriarchal wisdom, metaphor, masquerade and related expressions of sovereignty. Her iconic work, The Rebel (1989) is considered by many to be the work that situated Indigenous self- representation as a force to be reckoned with – as this image was a counter-act to images of Indigenous women produced across countless forums. This image is an act of resistance.
Niro’s early film, It Starts with a Whisper (1993, 27min18sec ) is a celebration of the strength, wisdom, beauty and humour of Native women; of Native culture and people, surviving and thriving. In the film, eighteen-year-old Shanna Sabbath, who has grown up on the Reserve, must now decide what path to follow in life. The choice between traditional and contemporary values seems impossible. In the end, she realizes she is loved and is entitled to live her life, remembering and respecting the people of the past and traditional ways.
Alice Olsen Williams was born in Trout Lake, 150 miles north of Kenora Ontario, Canada, in the traditional Anishinaabe territory of her mother’s people for millennia, long before Euro- colonization. Even as a child Alice had a delight for fabrics, creating small sewing projects that would later become her passion. Williams is renowned for her unique quilted textile works that blend expressions of Anishinaabe beliefs and ideology with reflections on contemporary social issues. Her distinctive style is grounded in the traditional skills of beadwork and sewing of the Anishinaabe people. Williams combines the knowledge and appreciation of both her European and Anishinaabe ancestry with new materials, to syncretize wonderful expressions in cultural meaning, the healing arts and Indigenous activism. In the Ininige exhibition, Williams’ textile work imbued with memory and the characteristics of intergenerational transfer of knowledge. This work speaks to her use of the symbols and themes of Anishinaabe culture, embedded in conventional North American quilting blocks and patterns.
Sandra Moore is a Michi Saagiig Ojibwe artist from Hiawatha First Nation. Her Anishnaabe name is Mkwa Kwe Binnoojii – Bear Woman Child. She is a mom, grandmother, auntie and wife. Moore’s art practice is also rooted in teaching others how to create and work with a variety of natural materials – porcupine quills, caribou or moose hair, tanned animal hide, tanned fish scales, birchbark and pine needles. For this exhibition Moore’s contemporary work will be juxtaposed with items of historic material culture- quillwork makak, tufted objects and tanned materials borrowed from private and institutional holdings.
Emerging artist, Dehmin Osawamick Cleland from Wikwemikong unceded territory, currently lives and works in Tkaronto / Toronto. She is a graduate of the Indigenous Visual Culture and Material Art & Design at OCADU (2019). Cleland’s Dress That Teaches (2019) provides evidence of the protection. In exhibition, the installation work of a royal blue dress beaded with recognizable Easter Woodlands’ flora like strawberry, trillium, and cedar, is in proximity to a kettle, mugs, and jars of various harvested herbs. In exhibition, the artist has invited visitors to brew teas from medicinal plants like winter green, yarrow, wild ginger, sweetgrass, willow, and wood betony. The jars are labeled with the name and properties of each herb in Anishinaabemowin. The notion of sharing and visiting along with the imagery on the dress speaks to the ongoing lessons that come from knowledge holders and from the land itself.
Teresa Vander Meer Chasse…