Abenaki Women Making Art
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The Conseil des arts de Montréal en tournée presents Abenaki Women Making Art produced by LandInSights, an organization for the dissemination of Aboriginal culture. The exhibit shows Alanis Obomsawin’s prints and Christine Sioui Wawanoloath’s sculptures. Artworks of Alanis Obomsawin and Christine Sioui Wawanoloath are an integral part of the working memory needed in order to recognize identity and belonging. Borrowing from the Abenaki Nation’s main myths on the creation of the world as well as the legends and teachings of their elders, these two great artists deliver, in a dazzling synthesis, an enlivening and penetrating portrait of the First Peoples today. Alanis Obomsawin reveals through her graphic works the visions and nostalgia that inhabit her: horses running free, happy children, Abenaki elders, unusual beings. Her pieces reflect the serenity of a woman who, for her entire life, has devoted herself body and soul to break the bonds of fear and indifference. Christine Sioui Wawanoloath creates a complex mythological universe, a reinvented genesis whose codes and signs have falsely naive aspects. That is the core of her art: to reveal what is essential, hidden under a playful cover. Her cosmogonic vision rests on an intimate knowledge of Abenaki mythology and a constant desire to remove it from the folklore where we have tried to lock it away. Founded in 1990, LandInSights began its operations by launching a Montreal Aboriginal film and video festival which became, in 1995, Montréal First Peoples’ Festival. Through this multi-disciplinary festival, but also through several events like this exhibition, LandInSight promotes Aboriginal art, history and traditions, as well as the richness and diversity of emerging and established contemporary artists from the First Peoples and the three Americas. Abenaki Women Making Art is the 61st travelling exhibition of the Conseil des arts de Montréal en tournée. It will continue to tour until March 2010 in various municipal venues on the island of Montreal. For over than 25 years, the Conseil des arts de Montréal en tournée has enabled arts organizations working in the performing arts, visual arts, literature, cinema, design, new media, and new artistic practices to tour their creations to the population at large. |
