Reminders for the People | Mariel Belanger

CURATED by Claudia Lala and Mariel Belanger. Produced by Rodrigo Ardiles.

Virtual Room View Opening December 21, 2020

 “We  acknowledge the land we are meeting on is the traditional territory of  many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg,  the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples and is now home  to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. We also  acknowledge that Toronto is covered by Treaty 13 with the Mississaugas  of the Credit. The Dish With One Spoon is a treaty territory between the  Anishnabe, Haudenosaunee and Mississauga bounds them to share the  territory and protect the land”.   LALAContemporary is pleased to present Reminders for the People, featuring  work by three Indigenous Artists from North America and Chile. This  exhibition explores and celebrates the lands, time, story and space to  tell the way we are related to and by water.
 

“The river of my people begins at the source of Okanagan Lake and  the glaciers from the Rocky Mountains through to the Columbia River. In  both the North and South America’s, the Indios, Indigenous people trace  their lifelines and family history through these rivers and sustain  themselves with the materials available”, Mariel expresses in her own  words how the memory of those stories came to be as she was floating in  her Salishan Sturgeon Nose Canoe.
Mariel Belanger
 

Indigenous storytelling is rooted in life with most stories talking  about the teachings of ancestors, land, spiritual mentors, rituals, and  ceremony. These stories are about healing, learning, respecting and  honoring life and in 2014 Belanger started following red fox down the  Columbia River, away from home embracing new ancestral lands, drinking  in fresh spring water from the Nahuelbuta mountains interacting with  ancient landscape, reflecting on her practise and how to share stories  and perspectives in her artistic projects.  Through an intimate process,  that seems inventive, dreamy, creative and deeply personal, the artist  intertwines the stories of her people and their shared cultural  memories. 
 

Reminders for the people is  a durational performance by MB who commissioned mural artist Aner Urra  to illustrate 46 images based on her featured film and recovery artist  Dr Shawn Brigman to sculpt his unique Salishan Sturgeon Nose Canoe  interpretation, for her to perform in. 
 

LALAConterporary is proud to present this project echoing the  collaboration between Belanger and her guest artists for the first time  exhibiting a selection of illustrations, video performances, and  featuring the Salishan Sturgeon Nose Canoe she currently performs in  (Peterborough Sept 2021,TBC) inspired by encounters with different  perspectives from the water and exploring the responsibility of what it  means to be a mixed Indigenous person in contemporary times.
 

Reminders for the People calls  us to reflect on a critical understanding of reconciliation, to look  further into the reality of the lives of Indigenous people, their  worldview of land protection and to position ourselves better as care  takers of the land. Believing art has the potential to be part of the  collective community and memory, to share knowledge, help us re connect,  re learn and re imagine a better future.
 

"Our children are watching us live, and what we are shouts louder than anything we say." 
 Wilfred A. Peterson
 

Reminders for the People will be LALAContemporary’s closing exhibit for 2020 and will continue until March 2021. 
For more information about this exhibit please visit www.LALAContemporary.com

Visit | REMINDERS OF THE PEOPLE | Online Exhibition

Book your private visit 

Sqilxw Woman:Their Voices Carry Across the Land | M.Belanger

Spepucn: Time travels in a Salishan Sturgeon Nose Canoe | Perfomance by M.Belanger

About Mariel Belanger
Syilx/ Okanagan Nation 
Mariel is dedicated to contributing to the growth of interdisciplinary  arts as a method to engage Indigenous community, language, culture and  act as a bridge to society telling stories of our time. As artist  scholar, her research is about Identity through the lens of Indigenous  Ways of Knowing and Being, Customary Law, Indigenous Feminism and  Performance Theory, exploring how cultural identity is rebuilt through  oral history and performance practice.  www.sqilxw.com
Reminders for the people is a screenplay  based in Syilx/Okanagan territory featuring inspiring Indigenous youth  from North South East and West who gather to become a forcé for those to  come. Following the captikwl – animal stories, Mariel watches the trail  red fox makes and follows as far south as the land goes.
 

About Aner Urra 
Mapuche Nation (Villarrica, WallMapu - 1984)
Currently lives in the south of Chile, in the rural area of Villarrica.
By profession Graphic, dedicated to painting and illustration since 2005.
Aner's work is marked by elements of nature, leaves, roots, plants, tree  bark, they dialogue with characters with native features, generating  dream stories, where perspectives, elements and meanings are transposed.
Along the path of mural painting, he has been able to leave his traces  in different latitudes such as Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia,  Colombia, Canada, Mexico and France. 
 

About Dr. Shawn Brigman 
Dr. Shawn Brigman is an enrolled member of  the Spokane Tribe of Indians and descendant of northern Plateau bands  (snʕáyckst – sinixt and tk’emlúps te secwepemc - shuswap). As a  traditional artisan for 15 consecutive years, his creative practice has  been one of ancestral recovery efforts in Washington, Idaho, British  Columbia, and Montana, exploring and transforming the way people read  Plateau architectural space by celebrating the physical revival of  ancestral Plateau art and architectural heritage. This involves working  with communities to connect to sources of Indigenous knowledge, often  taking participant learners out to ancestral lands to gather a diverse  range of natural materiality for ancestral frameworks like tule mat  lodges, pit houses, and bark sturgeon-nose canoes. In addition, Brigman  developed an original contemporary canoe interpretation in 2013 with a  unique frame assemblage and fabric skin attachment method now widely  known across the Plateau region as a Salishan Sturgeon Nose Canoe, and  he often gives presentations on this sculptural form. During the 2016  Prayer Journey to Standing Rock, North Dakota, four of his Salishan  Sturgeon Nose Canoes successfully delivered water protectors who brushed  the water of the Missouri River to the Cannonball River with gathered  canoes from the Pacific Northwest.
http://shawn-brigman.squarespace.com/
 

Photo Credit: Dr Shawn Brigman unique's Salishan Sturgeon Nose Canoe interpretation.