Site Specific/Public Art

maawandoobiwag (they sit together) (2019-20)
Mirrored and brushed stainless steel, Lights
Installed September 2020, Barrie ON

maawandoobiwag (they sit together) is a functional/interactive public artwork installed on the rooftop patio of The Gallery condominium in Barrie, Ontario. The work is site-specific, in that it was created so it is in dialogue with the natural and man-made features surrounding the art and those who will sit upon it. Inspired by the high-canopied pines surrounding the buildings, the foliage on the “trunk” beams were designed to cast intriguing shadows on warm, sunny days. At night, lights installed inside the trunks, glow through Nishnaabemwin words and images cut from the stainless steel beams. Drawing from my Nishnaabemwin teachings, I use our land-based language to name significant sites (and sights) in the surrounding landscape. The accompanying icon-like imagery act as way-markers, providing a visual map – linguistically and geographically. To access the meaning of the words, simple imagery is provided as a guide for those who venture further into this hidden puzzle. Physically, this piece sits in relation to and with its surroundings. For example, the back of the artwork faces a hill. In Nishnaabemwin, the word, “ishpadinaa,” was described to me as “land going upward” – and is inscribed in this trunk. The icon accompanying the word, denotes this landscape feature. The beam to the right faces another artwork titled, H.I.O. Big Chiefs – a sculpture mimicking canoes in form – and thus the word “jiimaan” is inscribed along with a depiction of a canoe. The final beam faces Kempenfelt Bay and thus provides the word “wiikwed” or, bay. In this way, the work will speak to those who are attentive to their surroundings but also to those who are keen to learn the original language of the land. Accessibility is important to me, so I designed maawandoobiwag to allow people who rely on wheelchairs and other devices, to experience the work firsthand. (note: permanent installation photos forthcoming)

Listen to the Land (2019)
Site-specific digital and audio installation
Nuit Blanche, Fort York National Historic Site

Curatorial Statement: A media projection cast upon a blockhouse—a heritage fortification at Fort York—will tease out remnants of Indigenous presence buried in the strata of place and memory threaded through vignettes. Each artist in “Listen to the Land” will take a different approach. Logan MacDonald will counter the longstanding colonial dominance constructed upon the surface of the site, overpowering those histories by projecting imagery of natural elements as both creative and destructive forces. Jason Baerg will animate the site’s evolving memory and knowledge through an encoded language of abstractions. The lens will shift from battles, cannons and gunfire to microscopic biological life in Vanessa Dion Fletcher’s re-envisioning of colonial violence to reorient the natural sustainability of site. Aylan Couchie will reintroduce Nishinaabemowin, a land-based describing language which predates Fort York by thousands of years. Nishnaabemowin’s function as a placeholder pushes back upon continued colonial naming and claiming of place.

Placeholders is: Aylan Couchie, Jason Baerg, Logan MacDonald, Vanessa Dion Fletcher (artists) and Ryan Rice (curator). This collective of creative activists embodies the diversity Indigeneity offers. Their name, Placeholders, addresses their relationship to land, diplomacy and language experienced through Indigenous bodies, representing the diaspora of an evolving urban community navigating past, present and future.

Acknowledgements:

Nishnaabemwin Teacher/Audio Performer, Blair Beaucage (Nipissing First Nation)

J-S Gauthier (Video mapping), Kyle Duffield (Creative Software Developer), Kaiden Fontaine (Documentation Assistant), Immony Men (Consultation) and thank you to OCAD University Life Science Department.

Curator Ryan Rice‘s exhibition essay for this work is titled, “Becoming Land Listeners + Placeholders: A Curatorial Reflection” (2019). Contact Ryan Rice to request access. (More videos to be uploaded)

Listen to the Land was curated for CREATION : DESTRUCTION, a Nuit Blanche curatorial project by Layne Hinton and Rui Pimenta.

Overlay of the Land (2019)
Stickers & Gumball Machines

From monuments and public art to commemorative plaques and renaming of place – Anishnaabe, Haudenosaunee and Wendat presence and histories continue their concealment under centuries of Torontonian colonial place-making and storytelling. Overlay of the Land is the fourth body of work emerging from The Acknowledgement Project, a research/creation component of my MFA thesis project. The Acknowledgement Project continues as an ongoing series of interventions and installations focused on removing land acknowledgements from their formal, institutional settings. Through community participation and activation, this label edition seeks to unexpected places and space, bringing acknowledgements into public view through unanticipated encounters.

Grateful thanks to curator Ryan Rice. This work was produced through his #LIWYFTTG (Land Is Where Your Feet Touch The Ground) ongoing Indigenous placemaking curatorial project. Thank you also to Catherine Heard’s Magical Gumball Machine of Fate curatorial project. This work was displayed at Onsite Gallery, Critical Distance Gallery, Aspace Gallery and was available throughout Peterborough as part of [in]sites site-specific public art project (via Artspace) in Fall 2019.

Land (2018)
Canada 150 Monument Intervention
Four engraved paving stones

In 2017, Canada celebrated its 150th birthday seen by many as another reminder of colonization and continued erasure of Indigenous nations. Across the country, cities and municipalities planned events and commemorations funded in part by half a billion dollars earmarked for the occasion by the federal government. As part of their 150 celebration the City of Barrie, in partnership with local Rotary Clubs, installed a commemorative Sesquicentennial Clock on the same shoreline that once sustained thousands of Wendat and Anishinaabe peoples. To partially fund this clock, custom engraved paving stones were offered for purchase to the general public to be installed on the grounds that surround the new monument. As a means to intervene in this ongoing erasure through commemoration and as a response to Canada 150, four bricks were purchased and engraved with land acknowledgements. The phrases from this site-specific intervention are the focus of Land’s gallery counterpart project titled, Aki.

now is the time to see the truth (2018)
Fishing net, wood, corrugated plastic, lights
Ice Follies 2018 – Lake Nipissing, North Bay Ontario

Photo Credit: Liz Lott

As longtime cohabitants, the residents of North Bay and Nipissing First Nation have had a relationship that has been, at times, contentious with respect to the health their shared waterway, Lake Nipissing. A seemingly never-ending conflict over the declining population of pickerel finds many area residents and businesses blaming the Anishinaabeg for netting. At the same time, there exists an unacknowledged history of settlers who have, themselves, overfished these waters in the past and continue to take from Nbisiing, both in summer and winter, with hundreds of ice huts dotting the frozen landscape. This work looks to acknowledge this ongoing tension, while at the same time serve as a reminder that we are all responsible for the health of our shared resources. We live in precarious times of changing climate and destructive pollution of our waterways and in the end, we are all stewards of these lands. Ni waamjigaadeg debwewin.

H.I.O. Big Chiefs (2017-18)
17′ height
Steel, Paint

Installed in Barrie, Ontario