Contemporary Native Art Biennial (BACA), 5th edition
Kahwatsiretátie : Teionkwariwaienna Tekariwaiennawahkòntie
Honoring kinship
Curated by David Garneau (Métis), with the assistance of rudi aker (Wolastoqiyik) and Faye Mullen.
On Wednesday, August 19, 2020, 3:00-4:00 pm EST, curator David Garneau, Ie’nikónirare Faye Mullen and curatorial assistant rudi aker will discuss BACA 2020 and the futures of Indigenous curatorial care.
David Garneau (Métis) is a Visual Arts Professor at the University of Regina. His practice includes painting, curation, and critical writing. He recently co-curated, with Kathleen Ash Milby, Transformer: Native Art in Light and Sound, National Museum of the American Indian, New York; Moving Forward, Never Forgetting, with Michelle LaVallee, an exhibition concerning the legacies of Indian Residential Schools, other forms of aggressive assimilation, and (re)conciliation, at the Mackenzie Art Gallery in Regina; and With Secrecy and Despatch, with Tess Allas, an international exhibition about massacres of Indigenous people, and memorialization, for the Campbelltown Art Centre, Sydney, Australia. Garneau has recently given keynote talks in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and throughout Canada. He is part of a five-year, SSHRC funded, curatorial research project, Creative Conciliation; Sensory Entanglements, an Australia/Canada, SSHRC-funded creative research project; and is working on the Tawatina Bridge project, a large public art work for the City of Edmonton. His paintings are in numerous public and private collections.
Currently Faye Mullen situates her practice in and alongside community as Ie’nikónirare for BACA 2020. Her role was specified by respected elder Otsitsaken:ra and faith keeper Niioieren of the Kanien’keha:ka community of Kahnawa:ke. They provide insight into her role within this project as one entrusted to continuously mind the thinking and carry the teachings of our relative, Wolf. Raised near the thundering waters of Onguiaahra, Faye Mullen is an auntie, earth worker, writer, art maker, community support worker and visitor on Tiohtià:ke / Mooniyaang / Montréal. Of a sculptural sensitivity, Faye works through the performative gesture in a variety of media including publications, site-specific interventions, sound installations, image-making both moving and still. Through a 2Spirit mixed indigenous (Anishinaabe/Algonquin/Irish/Italian) perspective, her practice reaches toward horizontality worlding queer imaginings and decolonial ways of being. Faye holds a BFA from OCAD (Toronto) + ENSBA (Paris), is a recipient of master’s degrees from both U of T (Toronto) and Fresnoy (Tourcoing) – currently in her doctoral research at UQÀM. Her artwork has been exhibited in group + solo exhibitions in Asia, Australia, Europe and across Turtle Island.
Assistant curator rudi aker (Wolastoqiyik) is a wolastoqew auntie, artist, organizer, and researcher from St. Mary’s First Nation in Sitansisk (Fredericton, New Brunswick) and, for now, a guest on Tiohtià:ke / Mooniyaang / Montreal. Their artistic and research practices center kinship, placehood, visibility, as well as the traversal of (un)colonized space(s) through conceptions of counter-cartographies and barrier-breaking. In September 2019, Rudi curated their first large-scale event, the finissage for the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective’s Quebec-based initiative, The Tiohtià:ke Project, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Montreal. They have presented their ongoing research-creation project, Topographies of a homeplace, as a workshop for Queering the Map: On_Site at 4th Space (Concordia University) in July 2019 and as a lecture for the TextilesTradeTime Symposium in October 2019. Rudi is finishing a BFA at Concordia University and is presently the Exhibitions and Communications Coordinator at SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art in Montreal, Quebec.
