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Old Sun

Adrian Stimson (Saskatoon, SK)
Runs from October 10, 2008 through to November 8, 2008
Reception: Friday, October 10 at 8:00 PM
Artist Talk: Friday, October 10 at 9:30 AM

Virtual Tour

 

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The text below was written by Lynne Bell and appeared in the invite that accompanied this show

 

Lynne Bell is a Professor in the Department of Art and Art History and Co-Director of the Humanities Research Unit at the University of Saskatchewan. Her essay on Adrian Stimson's work, "Buffalo Boy: Camp, Mourning, and the Forgiving of History" appeared in Canadian Art (Summer 2007).

Old Sun...

Walking into the spectral half-dark of Adrian Stimson’s exhibit, Old Sun, the visitor encounters three installations—Old Sun (2005), Sick and Tired (2004), and Inhumation (2008)—lit by internal points of light slicing through the darkness. The sound of a shovel beating on the ground and into the earth is as regular as a heartbeat or breathing.

The works that appear in Old Sun focus on a particular chapter in Canada’s history of colonialism: the long and unfinished story of the residential school system. This colonial education system—founded and operated through a state-church partnership for over a century until the last school closed in 1996—attempted to “kill the Indian in the child” (Fontaine) by erasing the culture of generations of Aboriginal people: an assimilative practice that is identified in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as cultural genocide.

The title, Old Sun, links this installation-event with Old Sun School, an Anglican residential school founded in 1890 on Stimson’s reserve: the Siksika Nation. Many of Stimson’s family members attended Old Sun School where so many children died of tuberculosis, mumps, cholera, small pox, influenza, measles, and malnutrition:  all in the name of civilization. In successive government reports Old Sun School became infamous for its high mortality rates: its buildings were condemned as unsanitary and its overcrowded dormitories were described as providing an ideal incubator for the spread of disease. As Stimson notes, Old Sun School—just an hour’s drive from the Truck gallery—was named after Old Sun or Natusapi, a chief of the Blackfoot and Stimson’s distant relative. “I find it ironic” Stimson says, “that Old Sun School is named after this respected leader who did not want to sign Treaty 7, preferring war to what, at the time, was seen as the end of our way of life. Old Sun School did ensure the end of a way of life for many of his descendants, including my family.”

Moving back-and-forth between the installations brings together an accumulation of images: a steel-ribbed sweat lodge lined with scraps of buffalo hide; a classroom light casting shadows that mimic the ‘double-cross’ of the Union Jack; a sleeping figure lying on an infirmary bed wrapped in buffalo fur; the phantom shadow of a flayed buffalo hide; a tall sketchy structure resembling an Indigenous burial platform and a wooden coffin; a small fur-sarcophagus suspended in front of  a projection of historical and contemporary images of Old Sun School; and an old Anglican church banner reading: “All one in Christ Jesus.”

Stimson’s installations start from and continually return to the found object: material fragments from Old Sun School including windows, light fixtures, an infirmary bed and black-and-white photographs from an instructor’s personal photo-album. “These fragments,” Stimson notes, “bear witness to the trauma of these schools. They also invoke my relationship to this history. I went to residential school until grade four as a day student. I have a lot of vivid memories that I draw on when I work with these fragments.” Talking about, Old Sun (2005), Stimson says: “The Old Sun light fixture that hangs above the sweat lodge shines downward interrogating the piece. I believe that objects hold energy. This light that once shone above the heads of many children in the school is a witness to cultural genocide. The shadow it creates on the fragments of bison fur is the Union Jack. Shadows of history haunt us but illumination of our history can enlighten us.” In bringing differing visual elements and signifying systems into juxtaposition, Stimson creates an image-montage that allusively yet insistently draws connections between things that are normally kept apart in the Canadian national imaginary.

Old Sun engages in the exhausting work of mourning yet it is also a story of survival and strength. In his practice as an artist, Stimson repeatedly turns to the figure of the buffalo as a metaphor for spirituality, creativity, and rebirth. In this exhibit, the figure of the buffalo is at once witness, mourner and survivor. As he tells it, “I use the bison as a symbol representing the destruction of the Aboriginal way of life. It also represents survival and cultural regeneration. The bison is central to Blackfoot being.”

In this hauntingly beautiful installation Stimson has created an archive of visual testimony that bears witness to Canada’s colonial past and the “national crime” (Milloy) of the residential school. It is an exhibit that reveals the affective and interrogative force of the visual arts and their ability to make a significant contribution to the urgent task of building an inclusive national imaginary as a process of historical accountability.

 

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Articles:

Ill Omens: Adrian Stimson's Old Sun by Bryn Evans

Stimson Seeks Truth and Reconciliation by Brendan Harrison

 

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Adrian Stimson

Adrian Stimson is a member of the Siksika (Blackfoot) Nation in southern Alberta. He is an interdisciplinary artist with a BFA with distinction from the Alberta College of Art & Design and MFA from the University of Saskatchewan.

Adrian is currently Associate curator at the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon. At the Mendel he also completed both the aboriginal curator and artist in residence through the Canada Council and Saskatchewan Arts Board. Adrian is a session instructor at the University of Saskatchewan and has written articles in Blackflash magazine and several Mendel publications.

Adrian’s curatorial projects include; Articulations a series of exhibitions under the Canada Councils curator in residence program. Emotional Geographies- Works from the Mendel’s 60’s and 70’s collection, The Easy Magic Machine – Barrett Russell, LIVE/LIVE, ArtsUp, SNAG and An Aboriginal Affair.

As an interdisciplinary artist, Adrian’s work includes paintings called Tarred & Feathered Bison utilizing tar and feathers as a contemporary material, which speaks to ideas of punishment and identity. His installation work utilizes residential school fragments as a post-colonial investigation. He has created "Buffalo Boy," a character parody of Buffalo Bill. "Buffalo Boy's Wild West Peep Show", "Buffalo Boy Getting it from 4 directions” and MFA exhibit “Buffalo Boy’s Heart On” are performances and exhibits that re-signify colonial history. Recent exhibits include “Sick and Tired” at the grunt gallery in Vancouver and a video called “Gambling the Prairie Winnings” in the “Back Talk” exhibition at the Dunlop Art Gallery in Regina. Bison Heart a series of oil and graphite paintings at the Nouveau Gallery in Regina.

Adrian was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal in 2003 and the Alberta Centennial Medal in 2005 for his human rights and diversity activism in various communities.