| News

Update : BACA 2022 – The Steward Hall Art Gallery welcomes the sixth Contemporary Native Art Biennial

Update : May 12

The Stewart Hall Cultural Center and the Central Library offer a series of activities alongside the BACA exhibition.

April 29

LAND BACK
May 7 to June 19

The Stewart Hall Art Gallery is proud to be one of the eight venues of the 6th edition of the Contemporary Native Art Biennial. Land Back is curated by Michael Patten with the support of guest researcher Alexandra Nordstrom.

An important part of Indigenous cultures is the connection to nature and cohabitation with the elements. Since time immemorial, indigenous peoples have protected biodiversity in the face of continued human population growth. The arrival of settlers of course disrupted ancestral practices in that regard.  The Land Back movement aims to restore governance and stewardship of the land for a sustainable future.

Some of the artists presented reappropriate ancestral techniques as an act of perpetuation, homage or resistance. Carrie Allison uses beadwork to represent medicinal flowers indigenous to northwestern Alberta. Erin Gingrich uses sculpture to represent key elements of her community’s diet, such as fishing and cranberry picking, while Christi Belcourt is inspired by floral motifs and Métis beadwork renderings in her work, replacing the roundness of the beads with paint dots made with a needle head. As a cornerstone of the exhibition, Jeffrey Gibson presents his video I Was Here (2018), a return to the imagined land as literal – a deep rootedness in the land and the nurturing earth. Marking the ground with an anonymous scar, it is through performative gesture that Julia Rose Sutherland has invested the exterior of the gallery; a hole in the landscape as a place of opening.

This fraction of the Biennial stands as an ode to the special link that unites indigenous peoples to this land and to its protection.

Exhibition: May 7 to June 19

Vernissage and performance: Sunday, May 8, 2 p.m.

ARTISTS: Carrie Allison, Christi Belcourt, Jeffrey Gibson, Erin Gingrich, Faye HeavyShield, Sky Hopinka, Julia Rose Sutherland, Charlene Vickers, Olivia Whetung

CURATOR: Michael Patten

Stewart Hall Art Gallery – 176, Du Bord-du-Lac – Lakeshore Road

Sunday to Friday: 1 to 4:30 p.m.

Saturday and Sunday: 1 to 5 p.m.

Free admission – accessible via elevator

Information: 514-630-1254, stewarthall@pointe-claire.ca