Exhibiting the Archive / Performing the Archive
October 2 – October 19 2014
Reception and performances to coincide with the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective’s Iakwé:iahre Colloquium will be held on Friday, October 17, 2014 at 7 p.m.
Sonny Assu | Emilie Monnet | Amy Malbeuf
Curated by Dayna Danger under the mentorship of Dr. Heather Igloliorte
Curator Dayna Danger, with curatorial mentorship by Heather Igloliorte, presents Exhibiting the Archive / Performing the Archive which examines our shared history of colonization in Canada through the work of three contemporary Aboriginal artists. Sonny Assu’s installation, which includes digital paintings and objects occupying the York Corridor Vitrine, will be a platform for the notion of “living archive”. Emilie Monnet’s performance within this space will draw from untold stories of Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women archived in the province of Quebec. Outside in the courtyard, Amy Malbeuf will perform an unraveling of the past through her body to reveal the possibilities of our future. (In the York Corridor vitrines and courtyard)
Dayna Danger (Metis/Polish/Ojibway) is a second year MFA student in the Faculty of Fine Arts of Concordia University, majoring in Photography. Danger was recently awarded an emerging curator mentorship grant through the SSHRC-funded Kanata Indigenous,Performance, New and Digital Media Art Project. Under the mentorship of Heather Igloliorte (Inuk, Nunatsiavut Territory), an independent curator and Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History, Danger is investigating Indigenous performance and digital media-created arts in the context of “the living archive”: the dynamic repository of Aboriginal knowledge and culture that is cared for, interpreted and disseminated by Aboriginal peoples.
Through museum interventions, large-scale installations, sculpture, photography, printmaking and paintings, Sonny Assu merges the aesthetics of Indigenous iconography with a pop art sensibility in an effort to address contemporary, political and ideological issues. His work often focuses on Indigenous issues and rights, consumerism, branding and new technologies, and the ways in which the past has come to inform contemporary ideas and identities. Assu infuses his work with wry humour to open the dialogue towards the use of consumerism, branding and technology as totemic representation. Within this, his work deals with the loss of language, loss of cultural resources and the effects of colonization upon the Indigenous people of North America.
Interdisciplinary artist Emilie Monnet founded Onishka Productions in 2011 to present performance-based work, created from unique collaborations between artists of different cultures and disciplines. Combining theatre, performance and media arts forms, her work explores the interconnections between identity, memory, imagination and language; telling stories that weave the symbolic realms of dreams and mythology – both personal and collective. Recent projects include recompose, an interdisciplinary performance created in collaboration with Aboriginal artists across Canada for Festival Phenomena; and the development of a nomadic artistic laboratory with indigenous sound artist Waira Nina from the Amazon, Colombia (in partnership with Oboro). Her artistic engagement is inspired by years of social activism with indigenous organizations in Canada and Latin America as well as community art projects with incarcerated women and Aboriginal youth. Emilie’s ancestry is Anishinaabe and French, and she lives in Montreal.
Amy Malbeuf is a multidisciplinary visual artist from Rich Lake, Alberta. Malbeuf’s work focuses on notions of identity, place, language, history, spirituality, and ecology. Through her art practice she examines the relationships between humanity and nature; deconstructs popular misunderstandings of Indigeneity; and explores the complicated intersections between race and culture. She utilizes a variety of mediums including performance, installation, sculpture, caribou hair tufting, beadwork, and digital media. Malbeuf has attended many artist residencies in Canada, the Untied States, and Australia and has exhibited and performed nationally.