Audi Atcheynum, Providing for the People (detail), acrylic on canvas, 2024
Featuring Featuring Audi Atcheynum, Catherine Blackburn, Daphne Boyer, Carole Epp, Patrick Fernandez, Torrie Ironstar, Dani LaValley, Kevin McKenzie, Bailey Randell-Monsebroten, and DJ Tapaquon.
The works in this exhibition are recent acquisitions to the Regina Public Library Permanent Collection and the SK Arts Permanent Collection, and are made by artists who have a connection to the Prairies. Evident in all the work, are the artists’ deep and profound relationships to family, culture, land, home, and community, which is achieved through various methods, materials, and strategies. Through playful, wry, serious, introspective, hopeful, joyous and critical approaches, the artists examine how they are situated within and what they envision for their communities. Most importantly, the works feature the powerful contribution that individual personal identities bring to the richness of a particular place.
Special thanks for the loan of artworks from SK Arts Permanent Collection.
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Audi Atcheynum
Inspired by ledger art, which is a method of documenting history or telling a story using drawing or painting, Audi Atcheynum tells an historical story of a chief providing for his community. The chief is identified through the style and representation of his rich regalia, as is his decorated horse. The chief is leading the hunt for bison, a critical source for the life of Indigenous people. Like the powerful clap of thunder, bison run through the scene adorned with lightning bolts, arrow patterns, and white dots to represent rain, hail or snow. Several tipis in the background are adorned with circles to represent community and to signify the tipis as safe and sacred spaces.
Catherine Blackburn
The two works Armour, Mother of Mobilization, late 21st century and Mother of Mobilization were a part of Catherine Blackburn’s touring exhibition, New Age Warriors that toured throughout Canada for over four years. Merging fashion, beading, photography, and sculpture, Blackburn explores Indigenous sovereignty, decolonization, and representation through the medium of beadwork and photography. While these themes continue to flow through this exhibition, Blackburn’s New Age Warriors expands conversations around love and perseverance. Combining regalia designed from plastic beads with photographs of Indigenous women wearing her creations, Blackburn considers Indigenous futures, storytelling and kinship, drawing from traditions of the past and the culture of the present to celebrate the strength of Indigenous women.
Daphne Boyer
The design in this digital photo is modelled after traditional Métis beadwork. Instead of using tiny beads, the artist Daphne Boyer meticulously arranges and photographs berries. Boyer prints her photographs in a large format to show the individual berries and seeds as life size. She describes her technique as “Berries to Beads” or digital beading. For her artwork, Boyer draws inspiration from her training as a plant scientist and the relationships we share with plants and animals, as well as her Métis history and family stories. This image is part of a series that Dunlop Art Gallery exhibited in 2021, entitled “Daphne Boyer: Otipemisiwak (People who live by their own rules)” in which Boyer celebrated her matrilineal ancestors and teachers. As part of her research, Boyer worked with Dr. Maureen Matthews, Curator of Ethnology at the Manitoba Museum. The design in this image, “Full Flower” is based on a historical work, a Moss Bag beaded in the 1890s (artifact H4-2-13, Manitoba Museum). A mossbag is an Indigenous baby carrier, used to swaddle very young infants and keep them snugly wrapped. The pattern in this image depicts a wild rose, which is often featured in Métis work as a symbol of resilience. The rose thrives in the harsh weather of the prairies, and the thorny stems reflect resistance.
Carole Epp
This work by Carole Epp addresses the priviledge of growing up on the Prairies being of French and English descent. As Epp write:
“My whiteness and my roots wove a safety net that held me.
When our idealism of the world is shattered,
we start to see all the web of lies from which that net was composed.”
“Pennies from heaven.
Platitudes from those in power.
Accountability unattainable.
We must all push back on the oppressive system
and acknowledge our complicity in it.” Patrick Fernandez
Seed for a New Beginning // Punla sa bagong simula depicts a great sea voyage of figures in search of a new beginning in a new land. Four standing figures carry elements that will help them in along their journey and at their final destination as they stand in support of the large, severed head, who appears to be someone or something of importance, perhaps a leader or figure head that can be transplanted on the new land. Along on the journey are animals bringing them good fortune: a fish to bring sustenance, a gopher to bring mastery above and below ground, and a crab to bring the drive to succeed. They sail along, anointed with the chartreuse glow, pulling them towards a greener place to call home.
Torrie Ironstar
Torrie Ironstar created Joy of Togetherness to represent the round dance, pow wow, and other Indigenous cultural ceremonies where people come together to celebrate and reinforce cultural practises. The pattern of the circular design represents a bird’s eye view of a tipi, which is the symbol of home. The colourful round form laden with complex geometic shapes represents togetherness and the enjoyment of being with community, on the land, and preserving cultural ways of being. In this essence, the act of gathering and being grounded on the land becomes not only home, but also a stablizing force that nurtures and supports the next generation.
For Torrie Ironstar, Filling the Four Directions is a work that reclaims his Indigenous identity and finding the roles and duties within that identity. He depicts the four direction crosses as integral guiding principals in Indigenous knowledge systems to help guide personal lives, work, relationships and friendships. Ironstar used a powerful colour red to celebrate true Indigeneity, associated with kinship and ancestral bloodlines. Green is used as a connection the land as well as to signify learning the cultural ways needed to carry on traditions into modern society. The circle in the centre of the painting represents finding and reclaiming true purpose and inner peace.
Kevin McKenzie
This work was created for Kevin McKenzie’s exhibition “Edge of Seventeen”, which was exhibited at Dunlop Art Gallery in 2023. The exhibition served to collect and preserve McKenzie’s memories of his past, including his father’s teachings and passion for hockey into a contemporary Indigenous experience. Through this work, McKenzie linked repressed childhood memories of his father to his current state of Indigenous regeneration and resistance to colonial assimilation.
McKenzie created “Hot-Rod Moccasins” from his mom’s old black leather jacket. He lined the work with crushed red velvet and beading on the vamp. The vamps feature beaded hot rod flames. McKenzie’s work is typically imbued with this playful reverence for the pop culture he grew up around as a young Indigenous man, reflecting a personal transformation, through a process of reconstructing Indigenous identity and masculinity.
Bailey Randell-Monsebroten
Carrot Bourassa was created in response to the occurrence of non-Indigenous people claiming to be Indigenous. A carrot, with its orange hue, represents the look of tanning products that darken the skin used to look more Indigenous. Slyly, Randell-Monsebroten included the original pale colour of a parsnip that can be seen behind the slipping Métis sash as well as the original colour of its green stalk, which has been dyed black. Not only does this work acknowledges that these attempts to look Indigenous are based on stereotypes that do not represent the range of physical attributes within Indigenous communities, but also reacts to the harmful impact of those who pretend to be Indigenous have on Indigenous People.
Dani LaValley
In this series of beaded pins called Kinship, Dani LaValley reflects on their valued community members emphasizing those who are often undervalued or overlooked. Each pin is purposefully and meticulously designed to honour the people who identify with each of the named communities. For example, the BIPOC pin is dedicated to those of Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour and features a wolf willow shrub and its soft, but pointy seed. This reflects the core strength and resilience of the BIPOC community and draws a connection between humans and the land. Each pin reflecting the qualities that make each identity distinct and beautiful, LaValley asserts that all of us are valued and belong here.
DJ Tapaquon
DL Tapaquon’s rich colourful paintings explore his Indigenous heritage. He uses expressive brushwork, bold colour, in his large works to depict people and places that are deeply important to him. In this work, Mother Looks One (Her Good Old Stories) Tapaquon not only considers the iconic presence of mothers within his family group, but also pays dear homage to all mothers as those who lead with intelligence, strength, and love.
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