Friday, August 9, 4 p.m. 2024
Eruoma Awashish, Craig Commanda, Amanda Roy
Public art inauguration
The Frédéric Back Tree Pavilion at the Montreal Botanical Garden
4101 Sherbrooke Street East
Montréal (QC)
On the occasion of the International Day of the World’s Indigenous People, the Biennale d’art contemporain autochtone (BACA) in partnership with Art Public Montréal is pleased to invite you to the inauguration of public artworks on August 9, starting at 4 p.m. at the The Frédéric Back Tree Pavilion at the Montreal Botanical Garden.
The new Public Art component of the 2024 edition of the Biennale d’art contemporain autochtone (BACA) will present four works by Indigenous artists in two locations across the city. Espace pour la vie will host works by Eruoma Awashish, Craig Commanda and Amanda Roy at the First Nation Garden and the Botanical Garden’s Frédéric Back Tree Pavilion. Sierra Barber’s work will be installed on the façade of Quai 5160 – Maison de la culture de Verdun, in the borough of Verdun.
This first temporary public art exhibition of the BACA is supported by the Bureau d’art public de la Ville de Montréal and realized with the financial assistance of the Government of Québec and the Ville de Montréal as part of the Entente de développement culturel de Montréal.
We look forward to seeing you on Friday, August 9, from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Botanical Garden, 4101 Sherbrooke Street East, Montreal, for this celebration in the presence of the artists.
We’ll be delighted to welcome Charles Patton, respected elder of the Kanien’keha:ka (Mohawk) Nation from the Kahnawa:ke community, and the Pow wow rangers for a percussion performance.
RSVP : https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/962110838417
How to get there : https://espacepourlavie.ca/acces/jardin-botanique
Also worth seeing:
August 9 – November 2024
Public art (Window façade)
Sierra Barber
Quai 5160 – Maison de la culture de Verdun
5160 Bd LaSalle, Verdun (QC)
Eruoma Awashish
The decolonization of the sacred is at the heart of Eruoma Awashish’s practice, as she appropriates the symbols of the Catholic religion to make them her own. It’s a way for her to re-appropriate her own spirituality and reverse the relationship of domination that the Catholic religion has had over indigenous peoples. Her main source of inspiration is the meeting of the traditions of her people and other First Nations with the modern world. She likes to play with the concept of duality, and her dual identity – Atikamekw on her father’s side and Québécois on her mother’s – enables her to “better understand the differences that distinguish these two peoples, and to create a space for dialogue through her work”. Through her artistic practice, Euroma Awashish explores her Atikamekw culture and her identity as an Atikamekw and Québécois woman. Her work speaks of hybridization and metamorphosis. Wound or grief is a theme she often addresses, seeing it as a gateway to transformation. Her work is imbued with spirituality, symbolism and syncretism.
Eruoma Awashish is an Atikamekw artist who grew up in the community of Opitciwan in Haute-Mauricie, Quebec. After earning a bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary art from the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, she lives and works in the Innu community of Mashteuiatsh.
Craig Commanda
Birch Bark biting is an ancient Anishinaabe art technique of folding up a thin piece of birch bark that is then bitten with the teeth to produce patterns in the bite marks for the light to shine through. Birch bark bitings were used for Quill work patterns as well as to pass the time. Craig Commanda learned how to do birch bark biting from Simon Brascoupé, who is a renowned artist from Kitigan Zibi.
Craig Commanda is an Anishnaabe multi-disciplinary artist from Kitigan Zibi First Nation, whose work encompasses film, music, beadwork, poetry, photography, traditional crafts, hide tanning, and digital fabrication. He holds a BFA in Film Production from Concordia University. His films have been screened at imagiNATIVE film + media arts festival (Tkaronto/Toronto), as well as across Turtle Island, and at festivals in Switzerland and new Zealand. He has shown beadwork at the Ottawa Art Gallery, SAW Gallery (Ottawa), Montreal Arts Contemporain, and at Pierre François Ouellette art contemporain (Tiohtià:ke/Montreal) and participated in art fairs in Montreal, Toronto, and the Revelations Biennale in Paris). In 2023, he completed a music residency at the Banff Centre. Currently, his practice is based in Montreal/Mòniyang.
Amanda Roy
A part of the Anishinaabek Nation creation story that Amanda Roy grew up with was how she they came to the Great Lakes and their migration from the East Coast of what is now Mi’kma’ki territory. There was a prophecy that they needed to go West, and they were given a path to follow with islands as markers. This migration took over 500 years and along the way several stops were made with some people remaining as others moved on. The first stop they made was the island of Mooniya which is now known by them as Mooniyaang and to others as Montréal and Tiohtià:ke by the Haudenosaunee.
Amanda Roy’s mural is in the woodland art style of the Anishinaabek that most people associate with Norval Morrisseau and Daphne Odjig. Daphne is from the same community of Wiikwemkoong as Amanda and was a babysitter then later teacher and mentor to Amanda’s father, Randy C. Trudeau. Randy is a part of what was considered the second wave of the Woodland art movement and was taught by Daphne Odjig and Carly Ray as a student of the summer workshop they hosted on Schreiber Island. He would later move to Toronto where he became friends with and was also mentored by Norval Morrisseau while developing his own style in the woodland art form.
Amanda Roy is Anishinaabek from Wiikwemkoong. She has worked with the National Film Board as an Associate Producer for their Hothouse Animation program and is currently a Line Producer with their Eastern Documentary Unit. She has worked on various film, tv, and digital media projects in various roles with several Indigenous production companies that have screened worldwide. Amanda is also a Hnatyshyn Foundation Reveal Indigenous Art Award Laureate and a Netflix-BANFF Diversity of Voices Fellow. Her artwork has been exhibited in spaces such as the Smithsonian Institute, the Berkeley Art Center, the Royal Alberta Museum, the Whyte Museum, the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, the Textile Museum of Canada, She:kon Gallery, and La Guilde. She has also completed several artist residencies.
Sierra Barber
My work reflects and balances the layered experiences of my identity. Using Haudenosaunee imagery, my work creates a space for me to explore my relationship to stories, both known and unknown. It reclaims and connects me to the stories that are a part of me and that I belong to.
When creating this piece I wanted to have the falling beaded flower pattern displayed on glass where the sky would be reflected, merging with the flowers and becoming part of the imagery. The imagery in the beaded flowers are of strawberries and the sky, this is inspired from the Mohawk creation story. My intention for this piece is to bring visibility to the stories that belong here, each beaded flower carries part of the story.
I use both vintage and new glass seed beads to create my beadwork. The vintage beads bring their own stories to the work that include surpassing bans of cultural expression. Strawberries and strawberry flowers appear in my work because they are a symbol of life, I also see them as a symbol of resilience. The use of patterns references ideas of repetition, cycles and continuity.
Sierra Barber (she/her) is an Upper Mohawk / mixed-European artist from Port Dover, ON, registered at the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. She graduated from OCAD University with a BFA in 2015, majoring in Sculpture and Installation with a minor in the Indigenous Visual Culture Program. Sierra is currently pursuing an MFA in the Painting and Drawing program at Concordia University in Tiohtiá:ke/ Montreal, QC. Her work has been shown in the annual Indigenous Art juried exhibition at the Woodland Cultural Centre, internationally at HOEA! Gallery in Aotearoa (New Zealand) and most recently in the 7th edition of the Contemporary Native Art Biennial (BACA) titled Creation Stories at Stewart Hall Art Gallery. Her recent solo show Sky Flowers was held at BACA’s Galerie She:kon. She is represented at the Art Gallery of Hamilton’s Art Sales & Services.
Pow Wow Rangers
Six Anishnawbe women came together through their journeys of recovery, forming a deep bond rooted in love and mutual support. Walking the red road together, they found strength and healing in their connection. As time passed and circumstances evolved, their unwavering bond remained the foundation where their journey toward healing began.
