About Urban Shaman

MISSION STATEMENT

Urban Shaman Gallery is an Aboriginal artist-run centre dedicated to meeting the needs of artists by providing a vehicle for artistic expression in all disciplines and at all levels by taking a leadership role in the cultivation of Indigenous art.

MANDATE
Urban Shaman Contemporary Aboriginal Art is a nationally recognized leader in Aboriginal arts programming and one of the foremost venues and voices for Aboriginal art in Canada. Our focus on developing new programming and new ways of presenting it, have resulted in increased exposure and the expansion of our activities. Urban Shaman is dedicated to the Aboriginal arts community and arts community at large.

• Committed to serving the needs of emerging, mid-career, and established Aboriginal artists through exhibitions and associated programming, workshops, residencies and curatorial initiatives.
• Dedicated to contributing to art historical and cultural critical discourses on a local, national, and international level.
• Committed to facilitating artistic production, education, and appreciation of contemporary art as an important and empowering tool for Aboriginal peoples.

Admission to the gallery is free.

Blueprints for a long walk

Curator’s Statement:
In August of 2009 artist Lisa Myers, her cousin, and her cousin’s son set out walking from Sault Ste. Marie to Espanola in Ontario. Their walk retraced the path taken by Myers’s grandfather many years before when he ran away from Shingwauk Residential School and survived by eating blueberries from plants along the train tracks.

Myers’s solo exhibition Blueprints for a long walk draws both from her grandfather’s story and reflects on the ways that her own experiences have been affected by her family history. Works included in the exhibition marry imagery from topographic maps obtained in preparation for her walk with sound and video documents gathered while present in those same places between Sault Ste. Marie and Espanola. Blueberries reoccur throughout the exhibition both in direct reference to the fruit and less overtly as the base tint for Myers’s printmaking inks. Together these works speak to the ways that memories can be tied to, and later triggered by, direct and metaphorical references to particular places and to food.

Artist Bio:
Lisa Myers is an independent curator and artist with a keen interest in interdisciplinary collaboration. She grew up in southern Ontario. Myers is of Anishinaabe ancestry from Shawanaga and Beausoleil First Nation. She cooked for many years satisfying hungry stomachs at Enaahtig Healing Lodge and Learning Centre. Her MFA research in Criticism and Curatorial Practice at OCAD University investigated cultural agency and the encoding of food from diverse Indigenous perspectives, and resulted in the exhibition titled Best Before. Myers has exhibited her work in a number of group exhibitions in venues including Onsite[at]OCAD (Toronto), MacLaren Art Centre (Barrie), and the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto). She lives and works in Toronto and Port Severn, Ontario.

Guest Curator Bio:
Suzanne Morrissette is Cree-Métis artist, curator, and writer from Winnipeg Manitoba who is currently based out of Thunder Bay in Northwestern Ontario. Morrissette received her BFA in 2009 from Emily Carr University of Art + Design and an MFA from OCAD University in 2011. Her research interests form at the intersection of different systems of knowledge, helping to question how the latent ideologies of settler-colonialism continue to inform present-day Indigenous realities on Turtle Island.

In 2011, Morrissette moved to Thunder Bay to work with the Thunder Bay Art Gallery on a two-year term with support from the Canada Council for the Arts’ Assistance to Aboriginal Curators for Residencies in Visual Arts grant. Some recent curatorial projects include Duane Linklater’s solo exhibition Something About Encounter (Thunder Bay Art Gallery, 2013), Setting: land (Thunder Bay Art Gallery, 2012), and Concealed Geographies (A Space Gallery/imagineNATIVE, 2012), which was co-curated with Julie Nagam.

Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art

This summer, the National Gallery of Canada is staging one of the most ambitious contemporary art exhibitions in its history. With installations filling both floors of our special exhibition spaces as well as our contemporary art galleries—not to mention several public spaces inside and outside the Gallery—Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art is Canada’s must-see exhibition this year.

Sakahàn—meaning “to light [a fire]” in the language of the Algonquin peoples—brings together more than 150 works of recent Indigenous art by over 80 artists from 16 countries, celebrating the National Gallery’s ongoing commitment to the study and appreciation of Indigenous art. This exhibition is the first in an ongoing series of surveys of Indigenous art. The artworks in Sakahàn provide diverse responses to what it means to be Indigenous today. Through their works, the artists engage with ideas of self-representation to question colonial narratives and present parallel histories; place value on the handmade; explore relationships between the spiritual, the uncanny and the everyday; and put forward highly personal responses to the impact of social and cultural trauma. The artworks range from video installations to sculptures, drawings, prints, paintings, performance art, murals and other new, site-specific projects created specifically for this exhibition.

Sakahàn features stunning and intricate works, such as an exquisite sculpture of a zippered shirt carved entirely from wood and a pair of masterfully shaped stone hands held together by a chain. Also included are monumental pieces, including a column comprised of 300 folded and stacked blankets that were donated by the public, a 50-metre-long banner hung above the colonnade ramp, and a commanding installation that transforms the façade of the Great Hall of the National Gallery of Canada into a work of art.

Sakahàn extends to other parts of the city: Murray Street in the ByWard Market will feature a billboard displaying a series of photographs depicting an artist dressed in powwow regalia as he goes about his daily, very metropolitan life. Museums and galleries in Ottawa, Gatineau and Wellington, New Zealand, are also staging related exhibitions in a summer of international Indigenous culture not to be missed.

Sakahàn is co-curated by Greg Hill, the NGC’s Audain Curator of Indigenous Art; Christine Lalonde, Associate Curator of Indigenous Art; and Candice Hopkins, the Elizabeth Simonfay Guest Curator, with the support of an international team of curatorial advisors: Arpana Caur (India), Brenda Croft (Australia), Lee-Ann Martin (Canada), Reiko Saito (Japan), Irene Snarby (Norway), Jolene Rickard (United States), Megan Tamati-Quennell (Aotearoa New Zealand), and Yuh-Yao Wan (Taiwan).

List of Artists
Vernon Ah Kee,Maria Thereza Alves,Pia Arke,Arnait Video Productions,Shuvinai Ashoona and John Noestheden,Sonny Assu,Mary Anne Barkhouse,Nanobah Becker,Christi Belcourt,Richard Bell,Rebecca Belmore,Corey Bulpitt and Larissa Healey,Andrea Carlson,Abraham Cruzvillegas and Jimena Mendoza,Cup’luaq (Jack Dalton),Suresh Kumar Dhurve,Beau Dick,Jimmie Durham,En Lei,Nicholas Galanin,Billy Gauthier,Jeffrey Gibson,Brett Graham and Rachael Rakena,Daniel Guzmán,Julie Edel Hardenberg,Marja Helander,Inuk Silis Høegh,Geir Tore Holm,Robert Houle,Terrance Houle,Bayrol Jimenez and Rolando Martínez,Jonathan Jones,Brian Jungen,Toru Kaizawa,Sonya Kelliher-Combs,Shigeyuki Kihara,Walis Labai,Omero Leyva,César Antonio López,Erica Lord,Jimmy Manning,Teresa Margolles,Da-ka-xeen Mehner,Danie Mellor,Alan Michelson,Kent Monkman,Wangechi Mutu,Nadia Myre,Shelley Niro,William Noah,Fiona Pardington,Michael Parekowhai,Viggo Pedersen,Outi Pieski,Jamasee Padluq Pitseolak,Tim Pitsiulak,Edward Poitras,Annie Pootoogook,Itee Pootoogook,Abel Rodríguez (Mogaje Guiju),Gjert Rognli,Jangarh Singh Shyam,Mayank Kumar Shyam,Venkat Raman Singh Shyam,Doug Smarch,Greg Staats,Yuma Taru,Jeff Thomas,Warwick Thornton,Jutai Toonoo,Maika’i Tubbs,Ingunn Utsi,Taika Waititi,Marie Watt,Steven Yazzie,Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun