Lauren Crazybull | TSIMA KOHTOTSITAPIIHPA Where are you from?
January 24 – April 18, 2020
Lauren Crazybull & Faye HeavyShield | Virtual Artist Talk | Saturday, March 14 at 1pm
Matthew Cardinal Live Performance | Saturday, April 18
Lauren Crazybull’s solo exhibition in the Garage, TSIMA KOHTOTSITAPIIHPA Where are you from? represents the culmination of their research and work as the 2019 Alberta Artist-in-Residence. Over the past year, Crazybull has travelled across the province, documenting their experiences as they visited sites of Indigenous history and community. Crazybull has assembled the extent of their research into a new project, which explores painting, mapmaking, sound and bookmaking. Crazybull’s exhibition is part of Noor Bhangu’s curatorial project even the birds are walking, which centres artists that stretch inherited social visions by accommodating cross-cultural, cross-temporal, and interspecial encounters.
TSIMA KOHTOTSITAPIIHPA Where are you from?, is a reflection on distance, repatriation and history. The project takes the form of a multi-work installation, plotting out and elevating key personal histories from Treaty 6, 7 and 8 territories, on the map of what we presently call Alberta. As the centrepiece of the exhibition, the painted map becomes a mural of stories, illustrating the diverse history of the land and the resilience of the Indigenous people who reside here. Language plays a major role and Crazybull traces the importance of memory and place through their deliberate use of primarily Blackfoot terminology. Moreover, Crazybull carefully intertwines aspects from their own experience into the larger narrative of Indigenous existence in Alberta, pondering the generational effects of social care systems and residential schools on Indigenous children. Alongside the painted map of Alberta, the exhibition will feature a 20 minute, 4 track audio piece comprised of audio recordings made by Crazybull during their travels. This audio work will also feature a score by musician Matthew Cardinal. Finally, the exhibition will showcase a book cataloging Crazybull’s time as Alberta’s first Artist-in-Residence. In the context of Noor Bhangu’s curatorial project even the birds are walking, TSIMA KOHTOTSITAPIIHPA Where are you from? is a recalling and reclaiming of history in an effort to imagine brighter pathways toward the future.
Watch Lauren Crazybull and Faye HeavyShield’s full artist talk here:
Watch Matthew Cardinal’s Full Live-Streamed performance here:
Lauren Crazybull is an Edmonton based Blackfoot, Dene visual artist. Lauren's most recent work has looked to explore the tension and power within portraiture by examining the subtle relationship between themself and the subjects they paint. By centring the gaze, beauty and rich humanity of fellow Indigenous people in their recent work, Lauren means to ask poignant questions about how Indigenous identities can be represented, experienced, celebrated and understood through the particular gaze that artistry casts and requires. In 2019, Lauren was appointed as Alberta’s first Artist in Residence. In 2018, they were awarded the McLuhan house year long studio residency. Before fully immersing into the visual art world, Lauren worked for 4 years in radio and broadcasting focusing on Indigenous issues. Following that, they worked for 2 years as the art coordinator at a centre for at-risk youth. Through this work, they understand that their creative power is a poignant way to assert their own humanity, and advocate, in diverse and subtle ways, for the innate intellectual, spiritual, creative and political fortitude of Indigenous people.
