Emerging from these conversations was the conviction on my part that there was indeed a sensibility, a “spirit,” at work and at play in the practice of many of the artists, grounded in a fundamentally comic world view and embodied in the traditional Native North American trickster. These pivotal questions set this study in motion and led to a series of animated and illuminating conversations across Canada from January 1990 to November 1991 with various members of the extended “Art Tribe,” as well as with Native elders, linguists, actors, performance artists, curators, and art historians. If so, is it merely the shrewd deployment of a familiar critical strategy, or does it reflect a broader cultural sensibility that would probably be lost on most non-Native viewers, and possibly on some Native viewers as well? Moreover, if such a sensibility is indeed present, would it necessarily manifest itself in the finished artwork? Or might it remain an aspect of practice alone? One may well ask if this is part of the aesthetic too. What may be surprising, however, is the wry and ironic humour that permeates much of their art. In this they might be said to resemble a “school” of art rather than a “tribe.” Not surprisingly, their work often addresses many of the social and political problems facing Aboriginal peoples today. Together, they constitute a loose alliance of socially active, politically aware, and professionally trained individuals of roughly the same age, who have, over the last fifteen to twenty years, exhibited with one another, written about one another, lectured on one another, curated exhibitions for one another, and to varying degrees influenced one another. These individuals-and a select group of others who share the same aesthetic-have much in common. In the catalogue to the show, co-curator Tom Hill wrote that “the shared cultural origins and parallel ideologies” of these ten artists “form an aesthetic.” The following May, Joane Cardinal-Schubert created a whimsical installation for a show at Galerie Articule in Montreal, Quebec, commemorating the artists in Beyond History. In May 1989, the Vancouver Art Gallery mounted the exhibition Beyond History, a collection of new works in mixed media by ten Canadian Native artists: Carl Beam, Bob Boyer, Joane Cardinal-Schubert, Domingo Cisneros, Robert Houle, Mike MacDonald, Ron Noganosh, Jane Ash Poitras, Edward Poitras, and Pierre Sioui. They have been artists for a long time.Ĭlowns are rarely asked what they’re up to, and seldom listened to when they’re asked. That the trickster and the clown have become major metaphors for the artist in this century with its increasing self-consciousness of the creative process is no accident. It also allows the artists to offer their own insights into the creative process and the nature of Native humour.Īnd in the US by the University of Washington Press Richly illustrated, The Trickster Shift presents some of the most stunningly original examples of contemporary Native art produced over the last twenty years. The Trickster Shift Humour and Irony in Contemporary Native Art School of Indigenous and Canadian Studies Shigeyuki Kihara: A Special New Sun Chair Presentation.New Sun Chair in Aboriginal Art and Culture.
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