Steeling the Gaze: Portraits by Aboriginal Artists

Curator's Talk with Steven Loft Saturday 22 October at 7 pm Organized by the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, an affiliate of the National Gallery of Canada Curated by Andrea Kunard and Steven Loft This exhibition brings together profoundly symbolic works by some of Canada’s most celebrated Indigenous artists and sends a powerful message about the evolution of Aboriginal self-determination in Canada. It combines portrait photographs and video installations by twelve artists – KC Adams, Carl Beam, Dana Claxton, Thirza Cuthand, Rosalie Favell, Kent Monkman, David Neel, Shelley Niro, Arthur Renwick, Greg Staats, Jeff Thomas, and Bear Witness. Steeling the Gaze explores how contemporary Aboriginal artists have used the photographic portrait as a means of self-expression in spite of its long, problematic history for their peoples. “The portrait is a European convention which exerts control over the subject,” explains the CMCP co-curator Andrea Kunard. “In the past, Aboriginal people were often objectified for commercial purposes. They were represented as a dying race doomed by the inexorable march of ‘civilization.’ Contrary to this portrayal, they have neither vanished nor died out; they survived.” Steven Loft, who recently completed a term as the NGC’s first-ever Curator in Residence, Indigenous Art, and is the exhibition’s other co-curator, adds “These artists use their cameras to create a means of cultural self-determination. By reconstructing the narrative of race, they have captured the wide plurality of Aboriginal histories, cultures and contemporary realities and have created their own visual identities.” To challenge the detrimental characterizations of Aboriginal life that have developed through colonization and assimilation, many artists in the exhibition represent identity as a changing and complex state, rather than one that is essential, singular and “frozen” in the past. Within these images which describe contemporary existence, references to traditions, family and community appear as a source of strength and grounding. Other artists reclaim images of themselves, their families and their communities and use them as a means of transforming past concerns into the present. They challenge stereotypes, creating a new visual history, and are harbingers of a changing reality. Steeling the Gaze: Portraits by Aboriginal Artists is affiliated with Photopolis 2011: The Halifax Festival of Photography, a tri-annual, citywide celebration that occurs during the month of October. Steven Loft is the keynote speaker at a one-day symposium on Saturday 22 October. For more information, please visit: www.photopolis.ca The Dalhousie Art Gallery is pleased to have assisted the Schulich School of Law in their presentation of the groundbreaking archival photo exhibition, Where are the Children? Healing the Legacy of the Residential Schools, organized by the Legacy of Hope Foundation in partnership with the Aboriginal Healing Foundation and Library and Archives Canada. The exhibition will be on display in the atrium of the Weldon Law Building, 6061 University Avenue, from 1 October to mid-November. Launched in 2002 and curated by Jeff Thomas (also an exhibitor in Steeling the Gaze: Portraits by Aboriginal Artists), the exhibition weaves together a part of the history of residential schools – that many Aboriginal people were forced to attend – using photographs, text panels, maps, original classroom textbooks and historical government papers. The exhibition does not attempt to tell the whole story about residential schools; rather, it introduces people to a part of Canadian history, and encourages visitors to ask important questions and to consider the history and experience of residential schools and their living legacies.