September 19, 2024 to October 20, 2024
Curatorial Essay written by Amy Switzer
I had the pleasure of working with Aylan Couchie when she was a student in the Art and Design Fundamentals program (2013) and the Fine Art program (2015) at Georgian College. I am now semi-retired from Georgian College and I teach part-time in the Fine Art program at Mount Allision University where I now live and work on the ancestral Mi’kmaq land in Sackville, New Brunswick.
Looking back at my 22 years of teaching at Georgian College, I feel immensely proud and fortunate to have worked with Aylan. She stands out as the most remarkable student I have ever worked with, largely in part to her superlative judgement and the drive that compelled her to tirelessly hone her skills as an artist. These skills have contributed to her ability to create thoughtful artwork of beauty and emotive presence. Her early exploration of materials was broad and she often chooses materials and objects for their haptic and emotive qualities. What resonates most for me, is how she employs these qualities to explore the intersection of personal and collective experiences revealing complex narratives of personal fortitude.
The selection of work in this exhibition is diverse, made over six years, from 2013 to 2019. It is informed by personal experience and sustained research. Some of this work I had the privilege to see her develop since it was made when she was a student in the sculpture classes I taught at Georgian College. The range of the works illustrates the evolution of her creative process while also offering insights into the methods and themes explored in her more recent work.
Her work is deeply personal, and is reflected in her methods and material choices. Perhaps the most prevalent, theme or undercurrent, is Aylan’s unwavering commitment to social justice. This commitment is evident even in her early work, such as Aggressive Assimilation (made when she was a student, and drawn from her grandfather’s residential school experience). What often emerges is her desire to commemorate, resulting in beautiful works that are richly layered in metaphor and meaning.
During her final year (2015) at Georgian, Aylan’s work was so accomplished, that I asked if I could nominate her for the International Sculpture Center’s (ISC) Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award. She humbly yet enthusiastically agreed, and we were absolutely thrilled when we learned that she won the Award! This was a significant accomplishment for Aylan, considering that only 18 pieces were selected by the jury out of 423 student nominees from university sculpture programs in North America and abroad, with over 952 works submitted.
The title of this exhibition, Survival of the Fittest hints at a paradox (perhaps of art education). The title evokes notions of endurance, adaptability and competition. Yet when working alongside Aylan (in the classroom) I never considered her competitive. What I witnessed was her genuine affection and care for her fellow students. She was fully engaged and often encouraged her peers with considered feedback, helped organize exhibitions, and was at the heart of the Fine Art community of students. So perhaps the title of this exhibition invites a deeper understanding of her experience of becoming and thriving as an artist and is a kind of meditation on how we, either as individuals or as a collective, navigate the challenges of artmaking. If it truly is the fittest that survive, perhaps the fittest are those like Aylan, who dare to seek genuine connections to reveal meaning and truth. The work in this exhibition has survived in part because it is all those things and it remains relevant and impactful.
Amy Switzer (she/her)
Part-time Lecturer
Mount Allison University
Sackville, New Brunswick
Artworks from Exhibition (click arrows to scroll)
Curatorial Statement
Survival of the Fittest is a retrospective exhibition by former Georgian College Fine Arts student Aylan Couchie. Couchie is a Nishnaabekwe interdisciplinary artist, curator and writer hailing from Nipissing First Nation. This exhibition highlights art from her time at Georgian College to current projects that consider the intersections of colonial/First Nations histories of place, culture and Indigenous erasure. Paired with a series of woodworking created by her Grandfather, Thomas Couchie-ban, including a series of small canoes he was in process of creating before his passing, Couchie pays homage to his creative inventiveness, teachings and inspiration. This exhibition is presented in partnership with the Wiidookdaading Indigenous Resource Centre, The MacLaren Art Centre, and the Museum and Gallery Studies Department.
Images of my Grandfather, Thomas Couchie-ban’s work (more to come)
Artist Bio
Aylan Couchie (she/her) is a Nishnaabekwe interdisciplinary artist, curator and writer hailing from Nipissing First Nation. She is a Georgian College alumna starting out in the Art & Design Fundamentals program (2012) and then completing a Fine Arts Advanced degree in 2015. She then headed east to Halifax to complete her BFA at NSCAD University in sculpture and installation (2016). From there, she moved to Tkarón:to, achieving her MFA in the Interdisciplinary Art, Media and Design program at OCAD University where she focused her thesis on reconciliation and its relationship to monument and public art. She’s currently in her fourth year of study at Queen’s University where she’s a PhD Candidate in the Cultural Studies program researching areas of land+language+Indigenous placemaking through mapping, naming and public art.
Couchie has been the recipient of several awards including an “Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture” award through the International Sculpture Centre and a Premier’s Award through Ontario Colleges. In 2023, she was chosen by Queen’s University as their nominee for the annual SSHRC Talent Award. She is a Committee Member of Nipissing First Nation’s Language & Culture Committee and a Board Member for Native Women in the Arts where she served as Board Chair from 2018 to 2020. She’s a single Mom to three boys and Nookmis (Grandmother) of four. She splits her time living and working between her NFN home community in Northern Ontario and Tkarón:to where she is employed as Assistant Professor of Indigenous Digital Art, Culture and Media at the University of Toronto.
[to be continued…]
Aylan Couchie 