Intro

0:04

it’s great to see you um all and uh thank you all for being here this evening

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um uh and and so i’m so thrilled to have actually all of the artists here

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full attendance and thank you all for joining us my name is shauna mccabe and i’m the

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director of the art gallery of guelph and i’d like to welcome you all as well as our guests bonnie devine b parsons

0:27

catherine cacpani barry pottel and ruth cut hand and i really look forward to our

0:32

dialogue this evening to begin i’d like to offer land acknowledgement on behalf of the art

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gallery of guelph which is hosting this dialogue tonight and where i am and our assistant tristan perfect is

0:43

who’s doing handling some of the technology tonight um the statement is crucial for cultural

0:49

institutions as the land acknowledgement confronts the ongoing effects of colonialism that underpin um the history

0:55

of of our museums and museums and not only have cultural institutions been um

1:02

and utilize deeply colonial methods of representation but because of the authority of these institutions they’ve

1:07

been accepted as truth um often in forming policies and practices

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so guelph ontario is located on treaty land that is steeped in rich indigenous

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history and home to many first nations inuit met people today and as we gather here this evening we’d

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like to acknowledge that we reside on the ancestral lands of the aderondran people and more recently

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the treaty lands and territory of the mississaugas of the credit we recognize the significance of the

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dish with one spoon covenant to this land and offer our respect to our anishinaabe and metis neighbors as we strive to

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strengthen our relationships with them we express gratitude and recognize our responsibility for the stewardship of

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the land on which we live work and create and as we’re gathered here virtually

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today connected and yet physically dispersed is also a good moment to recognize how the different traditional

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lands we reside in and move through every day inform our lives and we acknowledge the elders past

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present and future of these lands with gratitude and respect a few few details um everyone has been

2:15

muted for this conversation um she was listening and we would like to invite you to use the chat area for questions

2:21

as they come up and i know they will we’ll turn to those after the conversation um just to sort of

2:28

keep things focused on on the images we’ll be looking at and i wanted to just sort of explain the

Vectors of Transmission

2:34

context for this exhibition called vectors of transmission

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and which is on actually still on at the art gallery of gulf until sunday so you have a few more days to check it out if

2:46

you’re in the area the other exhibition we also have up currently is called breathe and that

2:53

also um deals with a pandemic and vectors of transmission really started um with a question and

3:00

i’m always interested in having our exhibitions really um play a role in public discourse and so uh you know as

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we’re making decisions about what we’re doing at the art gallery of guelph at any given point um our goal is to be responsive and

3:15

relevant that’s sort of always the big picture and when the pandemic began

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um i was looking um for artists who were working in in relationship to um what

3:27

was happening around us and and so work that was speaking to the condition that we were collectively experiencing from

3:33

their own very distinct perspectives and i’m sure as you go to art museums and

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art galleries you can see how often it’s quite easy to to basically indicate that nothing in

3:45

the world has changed exhibition programs often stay the same

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and you know basically what i was interested in is um an intent on providing a

3:56

platform basically for the work that did engage this transformation of the world that

4:01

we’ve all experienced and that the virus instigated

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and given the devastating effects of pandemics more broadly on indigenous communities historically i was

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particularly interested in providing space for the work and and perspectives of indigenous artists

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and that’s basically how it started um and uh in the process of doing that

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research i did select these five artists and invite them actually to create work in some

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cases for this exhibition and so and that produced the vectors of

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transmission project that is on view here it was also um developed and presented

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with the support of the creating in the time of coronavirus which is a funding

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source that was offered through the university of guelph to support these kinds of research projects

Artist bios

4:55

so um what i’m going to do now is just before we go into looking at the artwork

5:00

i’m just going to provide a little bit of a biography um for each artist and if you do want more information there’s

5:07

there’s longer bios on our vectors of transmission page on our website

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um but just to give you a sense of who the artists are and a little bit about their backgrounds

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a lot most of these come from their artists statements so um they’re sort of kind of a reflection of how they frame

5:25

their work as well so ruth cutham is a mixed-media artist with plains

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creed scottish and irish ancestry who is based in saskatoon currently um her first art materials as a child

5:37

included the orange paper discarded from polaroid chest x-rays that students were

5:43

subjected to in routine tuberculosis screenings near alberta’s blood 148

5:49

first nations reserve and so this sort of provoked her first and early first fascination with disease and indigenous

5:56

living conditions and settler native relationships um and this has remained key to her ongoing

6:03

artistic practice and as you’ll see traditional bead work actually plays a big part of her work today um and

6:09

looking at the impacts of colonization on indigenous people around around the country

6:15

bonnie divine is a member of the serpent river first nation uh ojibwe territory

6:21

located on lake huron’s northern shore and although formerly educated in sculpture and installation um which

6:28

she’s done in many many locations across the country in the united states um she a lot of much of her lessons and

6:36

learning came from the upbringing um and her grandparents who worked as trappers and her work emerged from their

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connection to the land and storytelling traditions of her anishinaabe and ancestors drawing upon ojibwe mythology

6:50

and image-making traditions to explore issues of land environment treaty and narrative

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she’s also an associate professor emerita and the founding chair of the indigenous visual culture program at

7:02

ocad university b parsons is a visual artist based in montreal where she was the 2020 artist

7:09

in residence at concordia university her drawings and paintings and prints

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that you’ll see tonight integrate elements of both abstraction as well as narrative with

7:20

references to the natural world and representations of femininity and ideas of freedom as well as surveillance as

7:27

you’ll see barry potle is an a nook artist from vanessa veg in labrador now living in

7:34

ottawa his practice is really photo based and uses photography as a medium of artistic

7:41

expression as a way of exploring the uniqueness of our everyday environments

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he began a position as an at-home indigenous artist in residence in

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saw gallery at the nordic lab there in 2020 and although he’s known best for his

7:58

photographic work um that documents everyday life this residency has really allowed him to

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explore sort of more uh multi-disciplinary directions as well

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and catherine tappani uh is an urban inuk whose family is originally from apex hill in vinomet

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she is a self-taught emerging photographer revealing the complexities and nuances of urban inuit life in

8:21

ottawa and she’s also an alumnus of the nunavut

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sorry programs i was trying that earlier

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designed to empower inuit youth through rigorous academic and as well as experiential learning and in that

8:39

program she focused on the nunavut agreement and its implementation researching historical inuit government

8:45

relations so that’s the background for you all um and now i’m just going to share a

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screen here so

Body Divine

8:59

there you go and um so perhaps we can start with uh

9:05

just looking at the exhibition and sort of looking at each of your work in

9:10

the exhibition and if i can ask you to talk about the work that you have on view and what prompted it and how does

9:18

it also relate to your practice more broadly and i thought i’d start with this image

9:23

actually and body divine this was actually the image that us an image that she posted on facebook

9:30

at um sort of early on in the pandemic and and it was called vectors of

9:36

transmission and i i i got in touch immediately and i said i want you in this show and can we use that as the

9:42

title of the exhibition um so which which she so generously um

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allowed and so just go forward here

Lauras work

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so here is her work which actually entails both of these images

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and here they are vectors of transmission windigo trials of solidarity

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as well as book works and these are journals that that she um she has many journals and allowed these two to be in

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the exhibition and what she also told me and bonnie you can talk about this is the image that

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you had posted on facebook was actually this size of an image so

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in order to create work for the exhibition it required sort of transforming it so maybe you could talk about that

10:37

you might be on mute actually okay

Lauras journals

10:43

um i usually i think the thing that really struck me about covid at the very beginning was um

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how impossible it was to comprehend what was actually

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facing us and that was early on and i realized that

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i didn’t even really know what a virus was um you know what its properties were how it

11:08

uh how it actually attacked us i didn’t know anything about it really of course i’d heard the word virus and

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had had many viruses in my life and i knew you know all of that stuff but when

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i probed my knowledge a little bit deeper i realized how very little i really knew

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and so these journals and the little drawings that are in the journals are really my attempt to learn

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about um about covet 19 and particularly about this

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idea that um this little monster um

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is um prowling around in the community and um and getting into us somehow and then

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hurting us when it gets into us and that idea was um very

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transfixing to me and so i am still engaged in um writing down

12:04

everything i can find out um about the research that’s going into

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the pandemic the medical measures that are being taken around the world um

12:16

the various medicines and vaccines the development of the vaccine

12:23

all this kind of really terrifying knowledge that was

12:28

bombarding us every day and a lot of it in terms that i i for one

12:35

didn’t have the background or the education to to understand uh what they

12:40

were talking about so um so yeah so these little books are my way of um recording

12:48

uh this journey of knowledge um as um as the as the pandemic and the global

12:53

response to it um educated uh me and i guess everybody to just how

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vulnerable and um unprepared we are and how dependent we are

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on uh systems that once again we don’t really understand how they work how they

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communicate together you know uh what the economies of those those systems are or anything

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um so yeah that those those are what the journals are about

Printmaking

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the larger works did you pull these from the small images yes i um i had made uh

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i was i was engaging in a a process of print making and so the images in the little books are um are

13:40

prints and collages and um the printmaking was important to me because i was thinking about

13:47

this idea of um propinquity you know how close this

13:53

thing gets to us that it’s so close that it actually um penetrates the skin or penetrates the

14:00

tissue penetrates us on a cellular level and the print um seemed to me to be a way

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to talk about that or feel that in in my body as i was exploring

14:15

this phenomenon and are you getting the details from um

Research

14:21

some of it seems like it’s from the news things you’re reading some things you’re viewing absolutely i i um i became a

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complete junkie um to to find out as much as i could so i was looking at um

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various youtube channels a couple in particular from great britain where they seemed to have

14:42

people who i trusted uh so i was staying away from you know crackpots which there was a lot

14:49

of and trying to stay with educators um doctors and medical people who were

14:55

trying to figure it out at the same time that we are trying to figure it out but had a but had an edge because they

15:02

had a epidemiological background or a background in public health and so

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they understood you know things like r-value or um

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um [Music] i can’t even like i’m so nervous i can’t even remember some of the terms but

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there were all these terms that were being thrown at us that i just didn’t know what they were and i felt like i in

15:26

order to survive this thing i needed to know some of what it all meant

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so yeah a lot of this is uh research data that’s been gathered by other people um talking about um how this thing

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actually replicates like what is exponential growth what does that mean

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and how can you map that out things like that and you feel like you’ve learned

15:53

well not really i mean you know they i mean there’s still so much

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um that is opaque about what’s going what’s really going on and uh

16:04

you know with the introduction of the vaccination this is that’s a whole set of books that aren’t even in this

16:11

particular grouping but once the vaccination was developed like how does that work

16:17

you know what’s an rna vaccine and um and then the whole reaction to that

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um and which is still going on you know really fascinating um

16:29

stuff and how many books do you have now i have eight now okay um they’re quite

Books

16:36

um laborious to produce because um i have to figure out what to put in them

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there’s so much like the information is not getting any less [Laughter]

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so um and i don’t know why it’s important to me to have all this information on hand but i really did

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want to have it kind of in a small portable format that i could leave through and

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refer to um as things were developing

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um and do you find you know the cataloging sort of impulse to catalog them to you know

17:10

create these records is it is that sort of part of your practice generally yes

17:16

yes i have i i am um i have been keeping a journal for almost my whole life and

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a lot of my work comes out of um my journals and um

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um a lot of well i think that quite a few artists work that way you know where

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um events kind of coalesce into images and then those images coalesce into um

17:42

works and so who knows where the inspiration is but yeah a lot of a lot of what i have been

17:49

working on for i would say the last 30 years comes from an intense

17:56

writing practice mapping too i think

Journals

18:02

yeah yeah because you know like for me uh writing and um sort of analyzing the

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the situation around us is about mapping um and locating ourselves

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temporally and geographically and so the writing really is a way for me to do that every day and this these

18:22

journals they really are a way for me to locate myself within this global

18:31

thing that we’re experiencing right now okay i’m not sure how many of these we

Numbers

18:36

have but i’ll just go through them and then maybe we can come back to this a little bit i just

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find them so fast and fascinatingly dense they are dense

18:47

it’s obsession yeah and the numbers

18:53

yeah and every day you know i would record the number of um new cases and the number of deaths

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and i tried to break it down um you know in different countries and particularly in terms of canada

19:06

and then um more recently i’ve been mapping that in terms of the provinces

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because um the lens is more sort of less focused on the global

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drama and more on the local drama so hospitalizations and um

19:25

you know critical um benchmarks in terms of the number of patients and um the number of healthcare

19:32

workers and all of that kind of thing so it’s all it’s all part of it

Bee Parsons

19:40

okay now we’re on to bee’s work thanks bonnie you’re welcome

19:45

b so this is uh these are works by b parsons um and if you want to unmute if

19:52

you’re there are you there okay unmuted and um but the individual works here uh we ended up

19:59

selecting three uh for the exhibition practice and

20:04

pantheon and first-hand witness so do you want to talk about this work

20:10

sure i am a visual artist i um

Bee Parsons Monoprinting

20:16

been creating mono prints exclusively for a few years now i was a painter

20:25

who was really caught between um painting and drawing and never quite

20:31

figuring out how to do either as i wasn’t really able to paint how i

20:38

drew and draw how i paint and uh storytelling for me is very

20:43

part of my work i make work that is narrative driven even if there isn’t a

20:51

full story with an arc um that takes place in my work i need a story

20:56

happening in my head um it’s how i make sense of things and it’s

21:02

very embedded in me um how knowledge is past and philosophy is taught so

21:08

i had these um [Music] anyway going back to the monotype i find drawings so related to

21:14

storytelling and thinking and how fast it moves communication and ideas out of the

21:21

hands um but at the same time i had an interest in painterly mark making

21:27

and the two didn’t go together i couldn’t paint as fast as i thought i couldn’t paint as fast as a story goes

21:33

through my mind um but i liked that problem

21:40

i could have just drawn but i like problems and i just was lucky enough to um

21:47

have a colleague point out to me a few years ago monoprinting and they said b you might

21:53

like monoprinting it’s fast um it’s quick it’s on paper

21:59

i’m just trying you know and i think just having a very playful um

22:04

approach to trying something new like it just blew my mind so um

22:10

i like mono printing um using this tonal black and white scale because uh

22:16

i can use painterly marks and move around and work quickly and

22:23

omitting color kind of um speeds up the process for me

22:29

you know because choosing colors and palettes is a whole decision making process so this links me back to just the immediacy

22:37

of drawing yeah while still being able to use all these skills i i developed and learnt over the years as

22:44

a painter so mono printing this work is um

22:49

from a series around the time year ago um i create a series called

22:56

payak which is um the cree word for the number one in english

23:02

and i i just call it payoc because it was one place where i could both paint

23:08

and draw and mono prints are silly you just make one and i often feel very um

23:15

[Music] at home and i feel at home with myself but

23:21

when you get into identity and background um you know you you kind of ask to be

23:28

separate like my kree half my scottish half and i said payout you know it’s

23:33

sort of a way to just like be one thing you know just see myself as uh

23:40

as this as a you know as a whole person and so

23:46

um that that was the series of work i was making around this time last year i

23:51

made a lot of the work during the pandemic

23:56

i was fortunate to be a member at a print shop that um

24:01

where i was able to access we had quite a few lockdowns in in the city where i live and uh

24:08

not a lot of access but fortunately my print shop was considered a factory it’s weird to think of a little art

24:15

factory but we’re able to slip between the cracks and and i was able to go and make work

24:21

um that said it was a very isolated period and i was thinking a lot about interactions and

24:27

communication also spent a great deal of the pandemic looking for things to do

24:33

i’m a curious person and i uh i was on my phone

24:39

learning duolingo learning french because of where i live in quebec and uh

24:47

uh learning my mom’s first language cree and being online um

24:55

you know looking for things to do i was meeting and connecting with people a

25:01

lot more um i took cree lessons with ruben quinn at the

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center for race and culture in edmonton oh gosh time is a flat circle right now

25:14

i was taking those lessons uh a year ago i started in november

25:21

so anyway language and communication and um you know stories and

25:28

and um just also being really in a strange situation um

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you know collectively with everyone and you know checking in with relatives i wasn’t in contact with

25:45

as much before you know texting checking in every day um

25:51

you know remaining in contact with people if not more so in a certain way in a certain

25:58

way um through technology and uh and out of um

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out of just a need to care so this piece we’re looking at um i was

26:11

kind of repeating these faces interacting with each other it’s called pantheon

26:16

because um i was just thinking about sort of a lot of stories and

26:22

and myths and trying to make sense of things i had a lot of faces um talking

26:27

to one another interacting with each other and um

26:34

thinking of the pantheon as like a collection of deities and and gods and spirits and how um

26:45

how how i was just sort of

26:51

going back through a lot of um ideas about creation how things make

26:57

sense through stories and how things are gonna look um

27:03

you know 100 years from now like how are we going to make sense of this current moment um in a mythological

27:10

sense down the road um because kind of always

27:15

interested in the in the idea of time and what gets repeated so that that’s sort of a

27:22

general um background of all the things that were going on i

27:27

guess pantheon too is just stuffing everything in you know it was sort of my personal response was to fill up time

27:34

and space with being creative and uh you know going back to

27:41

i mean part of being an artist is spending a lot of time alone and um devoting

27:49

um yourself to your craft and you know the the time spent during the pandemic

27:56

uh was a natural impulse you know go into the studio and work

28:02

one thing i was gonna say too um i’m spending a lot of time in this interface we’re all like in the screen

28:10

i’m actually embarrassed because i meant to switch my background that’s the institution where i work i was teaching

28:16

my class earlier i wanted something more artsy

28:23

it’s not it’s not the best anyway as much screens and hour interaction interacting and

28:29

formally i was playing with this the flatness of this space and the picture plane and

28:35

what we’re allowed to stare at and how we interact with people um right now

28:40

through these interfaces again using a very immediate personal tactile thing like moving ink around

28:48

on on a on a piece of plexiglas you know i uh i thought about that quite a bit in

28:55

regard to learning languages and why i think it’s really important to ask yourself why

29:00

you’re learning a language and um and who you want to talk to and what you

29:07

want to say and what’s exciting you know you have to want to you know with the art you have

29:12

to feel that genuine pull so i was moving around in that but uh

29:18

you know working with the flatness of the paper and the flatness moving out of rendered

29:24

um textures and then kind of like a comic book line

29:29

um you know a lot of that was um

29:35

kind of changed with the the zoom looking at zoom

29:40

um that piece of the little person looking out the window i made that

29:46

um in january 2020 and it felt so

29:51

strange because two months or three months later we were all you know that’s how i felt it felt like

29:56

a little premonition i i i was thinking about other things i was thinking about the artist and the first

30:03

sort of marks you lay down on a piece of paper or a notebook or you know like a

30:09

you know whatever you’re starting with and how you’re the you’re the first one there to see it and this particular

30:15

print has a bit of the process revealed i tend to really decorate and fill things with flowers and eyes and

30:22

characters and this one i just wanted to let the brayer brush or the roller and let some of the

30:29

um process let itself know and so it’s just a little figure inside the artwork

30:35

look how it’s made but you know context is everything and

30:40

uh it was the beginning of this um this series and

30:45

you know a few months later we were all kind of cautiously watching and peering out and

30:51

and um there was the hazard um the unknown so

30:57

that’s great funny it ended up in this in this exhibition conversation because it’s it’s a bit of

31:03

a it’s a bit of a premonition [Laughter]

31:08

well thanks thanks for having me yes thank you for for talking about it it’s

31:14

actually clarified so much so it’s always good to hear more so now

31:20

we’ve got catherine’s work um and this i know is part of a series and

31:26

um got each individual work here um ones we selected were quite specific

31:31

and quite intentional from the overall set but catherine maybe you can talk about the series and and sort of the

31:37

context and also it really reminds us of how you know so many things have intersected in

31:44

the last year definitely can everyone hear me yep yeah okay

31:51

perfect i um first off i would um love to say that

31:59

as um as an inuk who has lived in ottawa a lot of my

32:05

practice is based on the ottawa that i see through my lens a lot of my work is

32:11

just an extension of of myself the um

32:17

this was the uh march for justice uh when when the pandemic first hit and

32:25

after the killing of george floyd um the global movement i

32:33

i as a vipoc woman i

32:40

stand in solidarity with the black lives matter movement and i wanted to be able to capture

32:48

capture everything that the cumulative effects of

32:54

the racially profiled violence against black people it

32:59

as as b was mentioning while we were in the pandemic looking

33:05

everyone was connecting and and looking at the rest of the world through

33:11

through our screens through our computers through our tablets our phones laptops it

33:18

the devastation when we all saw that video globally and collectively

33:23

there was the largest movement for the black lives matter and i i

33:29

really wanted to stand in solidarity i wanted to capture people’s emotions

33:36

how the the outrage the disgust the

33:42

complete and utter i i saw i saw signs that mothers were holding

33:50

that said when george floyd called for his mother all mothers were

33:56

summoned or if someone says i can’t breathe you help them

34:02

it it was it was a very poignant and important move moment in history and i

34:09

i just wanted to be a part of that i wanted to be there

34:15

and stand in solidarity and you’ve been documenting protests you

34:21

know protests are and sort of critical moments like that i guess that are full of kind of

34:26

tension and energy are quite often your subject uh definitely i uh first

34:35

started um my career with the arc gallery of guelph my images of a pro

34:41

ceiling rally in 2018 was actually my my first exhibit and

34:48

it’s it’s it’s policies that completely affect

34:54

everyone that that there needs to be

35:01

there needs to be a collective uh power and using our voices to speak up against

35:07

the injustices that we face and it’s it’s really important to me that i i

35:14

attend these protests and use my voice and i use my camera and i share with the

35:21

world what i can as as well as everyone else just contribute

35:27

to to equality for all as the pitcher says there’s

35:32

there’s a lot of importance in in using your voice

35:38

and what i noticed that you have a new series resilience

35:44

it’s it’s um it’s actually a resilient the resilient series is where i

35:50

um where i have a lot of my documentary work

35:57

in in all in all avenues that’s fantastic thank you kathleen

36:04

thank you and now barry

36:10

so we have this series of c prints um and as well one other word separately so

36:16

this is monkey c and monkey dye

36:22

and uh we do have this work as well this is actually the first word that i have noticed um i very you know that’s when i

36:29

got in touch the microwave colors simply because and it’s funny how the mask has become such a

36:35

you know central element of a lot of work around the pandemic whether making

36:40

them or representing them and just in this case the images of this

36:46

very everyday fabric and textiles being used and then

36:51

very sort of documenting them as we often see them now on the ground so barry do you want to talk about that

36:57

okay thanks can you hear me yeah well thanks uh yeah i mean originally when the pandemic

37:04

started i wasn’t planning on doing anything related to defending what’s over it took me about a year and a half i think just

37:11

to get into it and then i had a an opportunity through the ago and through the ottawa uh public art program there

37:18

to do some work and and to explore this this this topic

37:23

and what i basically came up with is just a visual visual diary of what’s going on around me my neighborhood uh in

37:32

and around my neighborhood and just a little beyond very early on when it kind of excited my

37:38

wife and i used to go and do walks walk around the neighborhood walk around our old neighborhood just to get out and get

37:43

some fresh air and and just getting cooped up all the time so

37:48

that i we go out and we walk and i started taking my camera and it was for a year and a half before

37:55

i really started looking at the idea of doing the work with respect to the pandemic and uh

38:01

really what started it was i should i was walking with my wife and i was looking at the

38:06

rooftops the the roofs of buildings and i was looking at those wondering if anybody’s ever done any any work with

38:13

respect to roofs that sort of stuff right so i said picture take your pictures of roots but

38:19

that’s really really where it started uh the idea of getting back into the creative process again because for about

38:25

a year and a half year i wasn’t i wasn’t creating anything and just responding to

38:30

the pandemic on day to night in terms of being safe and family being safe

38:36

and uh everything else around it and then my wife uh her friend

38:42

created all those masks and we bought them from there and uh at the time i wasn’t really taking the mask thing

38:49

seriously until until it really really started to to be promoted

38:54

and the master i just wanted to to see if i could actually photograph them in

38:59

some kind of uh i guess visual format and uh i started photographing them this

39:07

is uh actually cushioning from my my uh my uh

39:12

seat nancy so i put them on that because it’s really bright really nice and i really

39:18

love color and i wanted to try and enhance that the mask the colors of the mask but also i wanted to see if i could

39:24

actually photograph them in a legitimate and artistic

39:30

expression view i guess and so i i photographed them in various uh settings

39:36

and whatnot with here you have the uh the uh elastic sound representing people

39:41

putting the mask on or do we put them on right but i got all these we got all these masks

39:48

and i love the colors of them and whatnot and so i started photographing and then

39:53

[Music] and then it was just part of the overall visual diary that i was taking going out

40:00

in the neighborhood and especially taking a picture of the people with mask on and in the neighborhood walking around

40:06

and and people responded to that right so and then these these uh monkey see

40:11

monkey dude we could die was a result of when the massive really started coming

40:17

into play and and i noticed when i’m well grocery shopping and why not notice that

40:24

they’re all over the ground people just throw them through them around without really kind of

40:30

disregard for human safety and cleanliness and and littering and that but i wanted to to

40:38

see if i could create something that can be impacted with it make an impact with

40:44

respect to the the disregard of public safety i think and health issues and everything

40:51

around that right so i looked at that monkey same monkey do and monkey dye came into came into my my uh

40:59

my mind as i was uh going around looking at mask and uh the first two masks are actually

41:05

on hospital grounds actually my wife was in the hospital last uh very early on in 2020 and so i was over uh

41:12

helping her and whatnot and i noticed the masquerade on the hospital grounds as well so the first two i took them on

41:18

they were actually on on hospital grounds right so this year there’s a little bit of uh

41:24

i don’t know what’s a word of contradiction i guess or whatever right and the other one the monkey guy is actually on the road i

41:31

wanted to show the visual representation of of some sort of death or some sort of

41:37

uh effect of these these mods thrown around disregarded and

41:44

disregarded to public safety right the last that’s where those come the idea for those those three pieces

41:51

that came into play but all kinds of stems from a visual diary i did uh

41:56

taking pictures out of around my neighborhood uh whether it’s people out walking around

42:02

or whether it’s uh people who have created signs and support of public public uh professional workers and the

42:09

healthcare front-line workers and that as well as people uh putting things out on their lawn

42:16

in response to the the virus and the pandemic some that are

42:23

humorous and sort of fun

42:28

to look at and just alleviate some some stresses and some anxiety in the neighborhood right so that’s that’s

42:34

where that comes from that my work with respect to uh contribution to this uh

42:39

this year and i know that so i first encountered your work just a couple of years ago

42:45

when top credit cartridge curated a show here um because it was january last year

42:53

and um she had included artists or well not artists but also non-artists um

43:00

based on sort of the images photographs that they were using and sharing on on social media kind of kind of the

43:08

sort of documentary quality of our everyday life now and she was emphatic that you’d be

43:14

included and we had another set of work so i do know that sort of capturing everyday life and just

43:21

you know sort of the lived environment is a really big part of your work yes yes i was trying to figure out how

43:26

to do that i mean like i said i wasn’t intending on doing any kind of things with the panda because i just didn’t

43:32

want to copycat people were doing i mean i’ve seen images on everywhere people uh

43:38

downtown out about the mask on and that sort of stuff so i didn’t really want to try and talk about what other people

43:45

didn’t know i just wanted to do my own concept conceptions and create something

43:50

that that responds to to my own personal uh i think uh endeavors and

43:56

uh thoughts on within the pandemic and uh my work is is very contemporary i

44:03

call it contemporary urgent new dark photography i am in ottawa we have a huge inner operation so i try and

44:10

highlight some of the vibrancy and some of the uh events and things that uh

44:16

pertain to uh you know urban innovate life here in ottawa so that’s the

44:22

crust of my work

44:28

well thank you welcome and finally last but not least ruth cut

Ruth Cuthand

44:34

hand and i guess when i started thinking about this exhibition i knew that ruth had to be

44:39

in the exhibition um ruth’s work has often dealt with disease and virus and

44:45

the impact on indigenous communities and um you know just i i actually

44:52

wondered as soon as the pandemic kid i thought is going to address that i’m sure

44:57

and so um uh when we were putting together this exhibition we actually were able to

45:03

borrow two works that were in private and public collections university of regina as well as a private collector in

45:09

um in saskatoon so ruth do you want to talk about this series

45:14

uh yeah as you mentioned i’m i’ve been beating diseases viruses for

45:22

oh it’s over i think it’s over 15 years and so when um

45:29

the news came out of wuhan china i was like

45:36

we went on the pandemic i was like uh i’m a nerd so every day i was on news

45:42

world watching watching okay is he gonna say it today is gonna say we have a pandemic

45:49

and you know i kept watching the numbers and and how everything was happening and then

45:55

one day he said it and i was so excited it’s just like ah i didn’t know it was

46:01

gonna be like this so you know i i thought i thought a pandemic would be more exciting um

46:07

so i started um beating the microscopic views of the virus and um

46:17

those sold out quickly and uh i’m always trying to think of ways to

46:23

make um my work a little more um

46:31

inexpensive so ordinary people can afford it

46:36

and so i thought okay masks and so i ordered masks and um

46:44

so i i was trying to figure out like what am i gonna do and so i beaded two

46:49

um viruses that match put them on the mask and it’s kind of like that the

46:54

virus can’t penetrate the mask it just stays on the surface

47:01

and talking about it as like a barrier to the disease

47:07

um i i just love disease i don’t even know

47:12

where to go with this i have such an excitement

47:17

what about the connection between the bead particularly in that history of

47:22

pandemic and environments my um you you called my beadwork

47:28

traditional but it’s not it’s contemporary beadwork yeah yeah and um

47:34

i when i started um i had to teach a beating class at first nations

47:39

university of canada on the sastoon campus and i was trying to think of a way

47:46

for students to be engaged in um in beading because we we often think of

47:53

beading as a design and the colors are set and you know you beat it

47:59

uh and i wanted a way for uh students to be more engaged so

48:04

i actually had them uh pick a painting and norvell morso was

48:10

like he lent himself to beads really well and uh so they beaded these paintings

48:15

and they had to think about color they had to think about is this color going to fit here you know

48:22

the size of the bead related relative to the image and and um

48:29

so they did that and i was like beading and i was trying to figure out what i wanted to do with my practice

48:35

and um i wanted to

48:41

beat something anyway one day i was looking at my beads and they’re so shiny and depth of color and they’re so

48:48

gorgeous and i started thinking about the first indigenous women who actually

48:53

saw beads and like how they would have been blown away by the bead and then i

48:59

started thinking about trade because they came you know from europe and and

49:04

uh were a massive trade item and then so then i started thinking about the diseases that came

49:11

and then i looked them up on the microscopic level and there are these gorgeous

49:16

images of microscopic views of viruses and it’s

49:22

like oh my god they’re gorgeous they’re so abstract it’s like

49:29

ah so i started beating diseases and the first series i did was called the trading series

49:35

and uh then i i wanted to keep doing the um

49:41

the project so then i moved into reserving which is like when uh and and i’m from western canada i’m from

49:47

saskatchewan so i picked like the the year that um my band signed treaty six

49:54

and forward to the discovery of hiv when that was called the reserving period

50:00

which is a lot of respiratory illnesses and stuff and stuff related to malnutrition

50:07

and then uh so when they discovered hiv forward was when i’ve been doing more

50:12

contemporary um beating and so when kovet hit it was just like

50:19

wow i was made for this so

50:25

i i couldn’t believe the reaction to it everybody was uh everybody wanted a

50:31

uh covet piece and i’m actually working on a giant piece um

50:39

five by five foot um virus that is made out of size eight

50:44

um transparent beads and it’s for there’s gonna be a international bead

50:50

show at the mckenzie in may tutu and so this is um

50:57

this is actually i have three beaters working on it it’s the what do you call it brick stitch and i’m not good at uh i

51:05

i like to bead on to something not the uh what they call bead weaving but they’re gonna make it it’s gonna be

51:12

huge and i’m gonna back light it and i’m hoping that that we can like it’ll throw um

51:20

color shadows onto the floor and for every indigenous inuit and metis

51:26

person that’s dyed in the pandemic i’m going to put a red bead and so i’ll have

51:31

red um fringe hanging from it it’s um sort of a memorial to covid

51:41

but unfortunately i i live in saskatchewan we have the worst numbers of any place in canada and

51:48

uh i on bad days i think this is going to go on for at least five more years on

51:55

good days i think oh another year so i don’t know when this is gonna be over

52:03

no no that’s the thing i guess no

52:08

um thanks bruce and i think um that kind of leads into the next question and

52:13

actually i’ll stop sharing here for a second because we’ve seen all the works maybe we could have more of a conversation

Discussion

52:19

and so um you know what one thing i also noticed was that throughout all of your

52:25

work there’s this documentary element um really capturing aspects of the pandemic and that’s sort of really

52:32

ranges for all of you in terms of your approach and um at the same time you’re all

52:37

clearly addressing these larger issues like ruth has just been talking about this you know the connection between you

52:43

know beads and the introduction of beads and and viruses and then um you know the

52:48

impact on indigenous communities so this basically you’re all sort of looking at these issues like the ongoing effects of

52:55

colonization and the need for social change right and the need for change in our everyday lives and at a larger scale

53:01

in terms of of uh communities and i just wonder if um you know you might want to talk about

53:07

how your practice has has allowed you to reflect on those issues i know all of you dealt with in very

53:13

different ways different scales and different ways so

53:19

who would like to go

53:28

how about bonnie oh very very distant there you go uh for me i think it’s it’s it’s more of

53:34

i think for me or lasted a while is is how disconnected i became home

53:41

from everybody and every day sitting here in my my my computer office slash studio

53:48

and not being able to connect with people properly or in a safe environment

53:54

and uh so the challenges and we’re talking about uh reflecting upon those challenges and even my my my cultural

54:02

practices as well i mean it’s gone way way down because of this rich kid there’s no way to to get together in a

54:09

safe environment i think it starts slowly starting to come open a bit now but for me it’s it’s just reflecting on

54:15

that and and and how how to deal with it how to how to get past being isolated and uh being

54:24

disconnected from folks right and everybody else from and and not being

54:29

able to interact with people on a daily basis so for me that’s that’s some things i’ve

54:35

been thinking about and how it came and uh

54:40

i’ve been looking at that and trying i came up with an idea for a future project dealing with that and i

54:47

called inuit non-practicing right so i looking at images looking at my my

54:52

works that i put together now and looking at what i can how i can

54:58

develop a project under the under that title right i mean uh whether it’s it’s

55:03

a lack of food whether it’s lack of speaking own language or trying to learn

55:09

it and and other other practices for me it’s just trying to i think uh

55:15

come to turn to that and try to i think

55:22

deal with it i think my practice has let me think about that

55:28

and i think about the things that have gone on uh

55:34

challenges around this pandemic and the challenges of just living in

55:39

what we call a normal life right that’s it

55:46

funny i’ll pull on you because um i know that i mean your work also dealt with isolation

55:51

so much right learning on our own and there is this element of you know the pandemic but

55:57

also in terms of colonial history how it’s sort of isolated and separated and

56:02

yes yes and i think also issues of scale

56:09

i think for me anyway everything got really small i was trying to manage just what i could

56:16

handle on my table and so the books are very small the writing is tiny and cramped

56:24

um the um the little presses that i was using the the plates that i was using to

56:30

create those um those images were small i remember when you when you wrote to me

56:36

first of all and said look i’d like to look at that work and i said well it’s about two inches by

56:43

crazy i three know how you know because i couldn’t um

56:48

i i couldn’t control anything and i was thinking i think anyway now i think what

56:54

i was trying to do is find a scale um that wouldn’t overwhelm um my um

57:02

emotional capacity to deal with it and so i needed to get really small and i just want to mention um catherine’s work

57:10

talking about the um the demonstrations you know this is big work right this is like this is a big scale

57:17

um stuff and i i really admire that um that ability to to get a hold of

57:25

that because um i have to say uh when they when they announced those first um

57:32

215 children um who had been brought up um or discovered in the ground

57:38

i stopped the ice i couldn’t make any more journals i i didn’t know where

57:44

uh to put that um in a scale that i could manage and i

57:49

still can’t you know i’m still um trying to grapple with um

57:56

even how to record that even how to um make images that will include that

58:01

because because it seems to me that that story and and of course the

58:07

george floyd story the the black lives matter story so many of this stuff

58:14

is all implicated in what’s happened to us um with the

58:19

pandemic and i’m not sure how that is but it feels like that to me so

58:25

so yeah for me this has really been about um how how do i

58:33

because my work is usually really big and all of a sudden it’s really small and i don’t know

58:40

and and then then i think about growth speeds and you know those are really tiny too in my microscopic image right

58:47

that that kind of really zoning in to the to the really tiny

58:52

and how um it makes me feel really tiny too right we’re just like not we don’t know what

59:00

is going on and we don’t seem to be able to get a hold of the real truth of the

59:08

matter yeah catherine do you want to talk about your

59:14

work because obviously you’re kind of you’re looking at social protests

59:21

uh definitely there’s a lot of my photographic practice in my career that

59:29

definitely captures very poignant moments of

59:34

protests and demonstrations but i also have created a lot of imagery

59:41

about politics even around for instance murder and missing indigenous women girls to spirit i

59:49

um i i currently have um some work in the national gallery there’s um the

59:54

smoke grenade and it represented the spirits it was a red smoke bomb and it was purposefully done in nature

1:00:02

with a with a um it was an indigenous woman

1:00:07

and she’s wearing fishnets there everything about it was intentional and

1:00:12

it was supposed to be a lot of my work like i said was just an extension of

1:00:18

myself and politics just ends up affecting every part of our

1:00:26

our lives and it’s a way to express and a way to grieve a way to honor a way to

1:00:34

share spread awareness there’s a lot of my practice that i definitely want to

1:00:41

open up conversations um i’ve received a lot of people tell me that they have learned something

1:00:47

new um with indigenous peoples in canada my my entire career

1:00:53

since graduating ns has been geared towards educating about inuit about my personal

1:01:01

experience as an urban inuk what contemporary means i know there’s a

1:01:07

lot of people who have misconceptions and don’t understand or don’t even know that inuit are

1:01:12

different from first nations or metis they there’s a big umbrella that everyone

1:01:17

gets slumped into and in order to in order to continue to create and

1:01:23

express and share parts of me a lot of that will be political and a lot of that does shine

1:01:30

light on different areas regarding that

1:01:36

thanks a b how about you

1:01:44

you might need to unmute there

1:01:49

awkward sorry it always happens uh something very contagious about hearing

1:01:56

everybody’s work and seeing the work in the show is this um kind of um contagious

1:02:04

uh not that’s a bad pun uh to use uh in the context of a copy talk but uh just

1:02:11

this sort of curiosity and um i think i need to like look at what’s

1:02:18

going on like in bonnie’s talk like about the work

1:02:23

recording information you know and going and uh logging it um

1:02:29

[Music] you know what’s happening especially when something so new and historical

1:02:35

is happening in real time and everybody’s implicated collectively

1:02:41

um and uh it’s it’s so like you know looking at masks on the

1:02:47

ground and ruth’s like i’m so excited about the viruses looking for keywords and how things are

1:02:54

and just going out taking pictures is something that i um

1:02:59

you know i reminds me why i’m an artist you know like going and

1:03:04

reacting not reacting but being in the moment with what’s what’s going on and uh

1:03:12

and um figuring out where you know you’re placed in it as an individual and

1:03:18

a group you don’t always just try to make sense of things um that don’t really make sense you know it’s

1:03:25

it’s really remind me of the humanity um in being an artist or what

1:03:31

whatever it is we do sometimes i don’t i’m an artist but sometimes i feel like all of me is art that it’s almost just

1:03:38

something else um um but yeah just just thinking about um

1:03:46

you know how so many qualities about being a maker

1:03:52

and an observer and a communicator um kind of help us through a situation like

1:03:58

this you know because it does i spend a lot of time alone at least i did

1:04:04

before um you know i uh i think you know

1:04:10

we had a lot of time to think a lot of time alone a lot of times separated from each other and i think as artists we

1:04:15

already do a lot of that and so um the work here and how it’s made really um

1:04:21

again feeds a part of my humanity and uh it makes me glad that uh this is

1:04:27

what i do in life and uh you know it’s it’s it’s

1:04:33

it’s good to come back out of the water and look around and see what other people made and what people have been thinking about and how that speaks to a

1:04:40

situation see this the kind of relatable things anyway i’m

1:04:45

not really talking about myself but it’s more how it reaffirms um you know going through something like

1:04:51

this it reaffirms uh you know the lifestyle that we have

1:04:56

thank you and when i there’s a line that i actually in describing this exhibition i

1:05:02

talk about your work kind of providing this context for a novel virus right so

1:05:08

the novel coronavirus and when i wrote that i really like

1:05:13

i i had sort of been thinking about ruth your work sort of as natural for this exhibition given you

1:05:19

would probably undoubtedly deal with coronavirus but um but just i was

1:05:25

thinking immediately about your work just in terms of you know you’ve always been looking at

1:05:31

context for these for this for these you know a virus basically but also disease

1:05:37

and and so uh and really in this case like providing your work does give us a sort

1:05:42

of really broad perspective on what’s happening now with it’s this particular virus

1:05:48

so um and just sort of put placing it historically right um so maybe do you want to talk about

1:05:54

that a bit are you talking to me yes oh yes

1:06:02

to you yeah i um

1:06:10

i uh i’m on social media

1:06:16

quite a bit because i i i used to be a professor so i i’m all into educating and so i put up lots of

1:06:24

things about decolonizing and uh a lot of stuff about coronavirus

1:06:30

and um how to protect yourself and all that kind of stuff and

1:06:36

one thing when the pandemic started this really has nothing

1:06:41

to do with your question but i’m going to continue anyway

1:06:49

the pandemic started i was like okay we’re all going into lockdown

1:06:55

what what what am i going to post you know and so i’ve been watching um newsworld day

1:07:02

after day and watching trudeau come out of his house and do the daily report and

1:07:08

um so i on facebook and instagram i started the

1:07:14

trudeau hair report on which i would report every day on his hair

1:07:20

and and um it became very popular it was really

1:07:26

weird and um so i um oh and people wanted to

1:07:33

join my facebook so i had to put it on instagram so people could follow without

1:07:38

because um i like to keep my facebook numbers down so

1:07:44

yeah it just became very popular and then i remember one day i missed it so i had to

1:07:50

do a little drawing a really bad drawing of trudeau but

1:07:55

people really liked it and we all um so that’s how i kind of got through that

1:08:00

first lockdown was uh having something to do every day that had nothing to do

1:08:06

with beating because beating is a very solitary thing

1:08:12

and uh it can uh i can only beat four hours a day for maybe

1:08:18

four days a week so i have a lot of down time to think about things and

1:08:24

stuff say my dog is

1:08:30

finally making the leap um thank you so much

1:08:35

a lot of you’ve actually sort of my last question was kind of about what you think about just given

1:08:40

um you know your reflection on artwork during this particular moment

1:08:46

during pandemic but what you think now about what art can do you know we always talk about art in relationship to change

1:08:52

and and in terms of like documenting change and that’s obviously been a key part of

1:08:59

this pandemic and we’ve talked about how art is a form of a form of resilience for for those making it but also for

1:09:05

communities who are exposed to it um so i just wonder you know i know

1:09:10

those words may or may not be in how you think about it but just wondering just given um you know where we’re at now uh

1:09:18

almost two years into it a few months away just what you think about what art can do moving forward and at this moment

1:09:30

it’s a more philosophical question i really

1:09:35

hate these uh what can art do well it’s like it’s really

1:09:42

it can be pretty it can be decorative and what i’m um

1:09:48

noticing um among museums and art galleries is they’re trying to figure out how to get more

1:09:54

people in and um i i think

1:10:00

part of that is a problem of our own making i think

1:10:06

where we’ve taken art and kind of put it in this reverential space

1:10:13

and doesn’t talk to people and i think uh with the pandemic it’s um

1:10:20

i i don’t want to put words in other people’s mouths but it’s kind of like we have become more human because we’re

1:10:27

all in the same thing and so the work that we’re doing also reflects how um

1:10:36

ordinary people are feeling and one thing i’ve noticed is in the pandemic there’s more uh exhibitions

1:10:43

online so that you can have a greater audience than having uh having it in a

1:10:49

really expensive building yeah it really did push us if we thought

1:10:56

you know we’re heading in a digital direction pandemic has accelerated quite a bit

1:11:05

anyone else have any thoughts on that catherine you

1:11:14

there we go i had to unmute i um i was thinking about the question um

1:11:22

in in my own lens i i definitely feel as if

1:11:28

art has been a way to [Music] really help heal

1:11:33

a lot of um a lot of the traumas i’ve experienced in my life during the

1:11:40

pandemic mental health has had a huge decline for

1:11:46

everybody and my brother had actually committed suicide and i i used

1:11:54

art as a way to help my grieving process to be able to

1:12:00

create to be able to express myself as a way to

1:12:06

not hold it inside as a way art art for me

1:12:12

like i said um was an extension of myself but more importantly it’s

1:12:18

it’s healing and it’s and it’s something that has definitely helped me get by and help me process

1:12:25

analyze i definitely used it

1:12:33

as a way to to to help me

1:12:40

so art art is very very um art is very personal for me and and it’s

1:12:47

definitely a way to to honor and and to remember and to

1:12:55

um and to share

1:13:01

so sorry for your loss captain and i think he spoke really eloquently

1:13:07

to what to what art can do

1:13:12

any final thoughts

1:13:18

bonnie no not really i i um

1:13:24

i extend my condolences to you catherine for your loss it’s so dreadful

1:13:30

um i believe what you said you know i don’t add anything to what you said i think uh heart can heal and

1:13:36

i hope it can heal those people who look at it uh but i know it can heal those people

1:13:42

who make it and so yeah thank you

1:13:52

b or or barry i just wanted to uh

1:13:58

thank uh you bring our work together and really appreciate being in a group with uh

1:14:05

so much um meaningful work and i want to send my condolences to you

1:14:12

and your family catherine

1:14:20

um maybe on that note i don’t see any questions from the audience

1:14:27

so perhaps we can end on that note um i’d like to thank you all for being with us tonight and uh thank you to all

1:14:35

of you who joined us um it’s been it’s kind of perfect to have this at the end of the exhibition

1:14:41

to sort of um you know to sort of bring you all together actually and i’m so thrilled

1:14:46

you’re all able to join us and your work is all powerful and all poignant in different ways and

1:14:54

i do think it does give people um just access to other people’s experiences right so um

1:15:01

that way we can kind of see how we are collectively sharing this moment so

1:15:07

thank you all for joining us and i hope you all have a wonderful evening and take care of yourselves

1:15:14

good night everyone good night good night thank you good night thanks everyone

1:15:19

bye good night everybody

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