Brian Solomon and Mariana Medellin-Meinke, The NDN Way, dance performance hosted by Eastern Edge Gallery in April 2018. Photo: Ed Maruyama

To “identify” is to name something and render it visible, even if it may have been present all along. Organized by Eastern Edge Gallery, the Identify festival facilitates the gathering and sharing of traditional and contemporary artistic and cultural practices of Indigenous peoples in Newfoundland and Labrador including Mi’kmaq, Inuit, Innu, Southern Inuit of Nunatukavut and Beothuk. The Gallery describes it as a “platform for Indigenous-led conversations on self-identity, self-rediscovery and celebration of Indigenous cultures of Newfoundland and Labrador”—and it’s more than a year-long process (running from September 2017- December 2018).

Why does Eastern Edge use the term “self-rediscovery”? The answer is rooted in a complex settler-biased history that has, until recently, emphasized distance and loss when discussing Indigenous peoples. Many examples can be cited. Among them, a widely held and historically convenient belief that all Beothuk were decimated due to colonial intervention—a stance that negates many who identify now as having Beothuk ancestry. In Labrador, the people of Nunatsiavut and Nunavik (one-third of Canada’s Inuit population) were excluded from the Federal Government’s Northern Strategy in 2004, which outlined initiatives for economic development and northern sovereignty. Residential-school survivors in Labrador were also excluded from compensation provided to survivors elsewhere. In residential schools throughout the province, many Indigenous children were taught to be ashamed of their heritage.

This history is now changing as more people reclaim and celebrate their Indigeneity. With the recent establishment of the Qalipu (Mi’kmaq) nation, approximately one-fifth of Newfoundland and Labrador’s population fit the criteria for membership. So many people applied, that the Federal Government began to deny status to many people who identified as Indigenous, and revisited the terms of acceptance. In Labrador, there was only recent acknowledgement of many Labrador Indigenous groups as having status on a Federal level. To “re-discover” is to shine light upon what has always existed, while also defining its terms from within the communities themselves.

Identify launched with an exhibition titled The Lay of the Land, featuring work by Logan MacDonald, followed by Pejipuk: the winter is coming by Meagan Musseau. Both artists spoke from a position of rediscovering and redefining their Indigenous heritage, and approaching larger histories from a personal perspective while exploring key notions of memory and reactivation.

Logan MacDonald, installation detail of The Lay of the Land, October 27 – December 08, 2017, Eastern Edge Gallery.

The act of recovery was made plain through a powerful exhibition titled RECLAMATION by Mi’kmaq curator and artist Jerry Evans, who placed Indigenous artists from throughout the province in the Lieutenant Governor’s residence. A teepee was also constructed on the lawn of the residence by the St. John’s Native Friendship Centre—a significant and impactful gesture of presence and gathering. At Eastern Edge Gallery that same week, Mi’kmaq musician Joanna Barker’s curatorial debut, tet; mâni; ute|here, brought together two artists who turned their attention to everyday life in Newfoundland and Labrador. John Jeddore recorded scenes from everyday life in Miawpukek First Nation (Conne River, NL), while Melissa Tremblett passed her camera to children in her community of Sheshatshui (Labrador). Each child’s perspective was gathered in a hand-bound book with their name, and accompanied by Labrador tea dolls made by different generations.

As a curator at the provincial institution and a person of settler origin, I was humbled by the care and attention given by all involved. In particular, I was reminded of the value of sharing stories in a safe space (and the importance of listening when these stories are told). It was a lesson reinforced as Mi’kmaq artist Jordan Bennett painted his mural at the Rawlin’s Cross intersection in St. John’s. His imagery draws from Shanawdithit drawings held in The Rooms’ collections, Mi’kmaq and Beothuk canoe and paddle designs, and motifs from quill basketry. The site for the mural became a gathering space as other artists helped paint while members of the community dropped by. It remains a record of that time, in addition to altering the tone of the intersection for passersby.

A mural may last decades, but what is the lifespan of a voice? With this festival, each voice resonated. The powerful performance of NDN Way, by Brian Solomon and Mariana Medellin-Meinke, combined songs and imagery from contemporary popular culture with a voiceover by Cree storyteller Ron Evans that described Indigenous knowledge. The final event of the week celebrated throat singing by Jennie Williams and Tabitha Blake, and a performance by the all-women drum group Eastern Owl, who blend contemporary and traditional compositions.

Brian Solomon and Mariana Medellin-Meinke, The NDN Way, dance performance hosted by Eastern Edge Gallery in April 2018. Photo: Ed Maruyama

As they introduced each song, Jennie William’s baby could be heard backstage. The baby’s coos had permeated every event. Baby sounds would punctuate speeches mid-sentence, halt panel discussions in acknowledgement of her presence, and even sing along with her mother. At each event, she was passed lovingly and carefully from person to person, and kissed gently if she cried.

Maria Hupfield & Jason Lujan, DOUBLE SHIFT, (photo: Topher & Rae Studios)

In September 2004, Artforum published a paper Glenn Ligon mistakenly prepared and delivered for his part in a College Art Association panel on the artist David Hammons. The resulting text, “Black Light: David Hammons and the Poetics of Emptiness,” is a gift to anyone considering the ways in which contemporary art connects with people’s lives when it leaves the gallery and goes out to occupy other spaces. “Black Light,” was fresh in my mind when Visual Arts News editor Shannon Webb-Campbell asked if I would write a blog post about this year’s Nocturne events and has stuck with me as I took her up on it.

Before what we’ve come to call “Nuit Blanche” or “White Night” style events spread to Turtle Island, they started in Europe with events such as the Helsinki Festival’s “Night of the Arts” in 1989 and the city of Nantes’ six-year project “Les Allumees.” The latter invited artists from a different city each year to share one-night projects in Nantes between 1990 to 1995. The name “White Night” seems to have first cropped up to title St. Petersburg’s first art at night festival in 1993. Coincidentally, that makes the name “White Night” only as old as this writer.

In 2002, Paris launched its white night event, giving the world the title “Nuit Blanche.” Nuit Blanche reached Canada via Montreal in 2004. Toronto held its first Nuit Blanche in 2006, and in 2007, when Rose Zack, Laura Carmichael and a remarkably small group of volunteers set out to bring a nuit blanche style event to Halifax, the name “Nocturne” was chosen instead.

Maria Hupfield & Jason Lujan, DOUBLE SHIFT, (photo: Topher & Rae Studios)

This year was Nocturne’s eleventh edition, marked by a partnership with the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective, who helped select Raven Davis as Nocturne’s first Indigenous Curator. Davis, in turn, selected this Nocturne’s theme: Nomadic Reciprocity, a multilayered reflection on what is given and what is taken as we move through space, and as we move here in Halifax over unceded and unsurrendered Mi’kmaq territory.

Speaking to CBC’s Rosanna Deerchild on the night of the event, Davis gave some insight into the success of how their theme opened up Nocturne to new artists. “What I’ve been told is that there’s been over 50% new applications to this festival. The majority of them from black, Indigenous and people of colour. Which for me is a great success. What it means is there is over 50% new work and new artists that haven’t felt like they’ve been represented in these festivals that are coming out to make work.”

The encouragement of Davis’ theme had a profound impact on the makeup of the festival.

Projects took a smaller scale; opting for thoughtful, political content over bright lights and visual impact. The body – its weight, its histories lived and inherited, and how its race affects its experience took centre stage.

Performance work by Brian Solomon (Red Flag), Maria Hupfield and Jason Lujan (Double Shift, and There Is No Then and Now, Only Is and Is Not), Ursula Johnson and Angela Parsons (L’nuisimk: El-noo-we-simk: Speaking Indian) and Leelee Davis, Lisa Gambletron and Dayna Danger (That Which We Cannot Own) prioritized the presence of Indigenous bodies in the festival.

As I witnessed their performance, Danger, Davis and Gambletron spoke similarly in metaphor and laboured with their surroundings. In a black box theatre, they had staged with mics, projections, props and structures, they took turns uttering phrases that could have been sarcastic; could have been ironic; and could have been directed at either each other or the audience. “I need help. Can somebody help me? Please! I need to clean up this mess. I am trying to clean up this mess. I don’t know who made it. But please, can somebody help me clean this up?” said Danger. “We’re being good guests! Let’s be good guests, Danger! We’re just being good guests!” said Davis. Their props: leather, bones, tarps, drums and images of water protectors gave poignantly veiled reference to the colonial implications of their actions and dialogue. With great subtlety they depicted the difficulty itself of standing up and speaking to Canada’s colonial history.

Leelee Davis, Lisa Gambletron and Dayna Danger, That Which We Cannot Own, (photo: Kylee Nunn)

Similarly, Brian Solomon’s Red Flag, veiled the body of a performer with fabric hung from a flagpole in order to open up a multitude of new readings. Not the least of which being a powerful evocation of the bodiefs that have historically and today continue to disappear under the sign of the Canadian flag.

Ligon said, “It’s hard to leave your body behind, especially when your body is always being thrown up in your face. Being is heavy as a motherfucker. The question is: How to remove weight, to move towards lightness, as Hammons has? How to do this while still acknowledging the particular history of a body that has been used, as Stuart Hall suggests, ‘as if it was, and often it was, the only cultural capital we had?’ These questions now occupy several young artists who walk the threshold between a dematerialized and a historicized body.”

Brian Soloman, Red Flag (photo: Topher & Rae Studios)

Although, Ligon is speaking about a generation of black American artists who have since taken centre stage in the American art world, his articulation, “walk the threshold between a dematerialized and a historicized body,” resonates with the projects in Nocturne this year.

This seems especially resonant with Hupfield and Lujan’s There Is No Then and Now, Only Is and Is Not a single channel video set up outside the Old Memorial Library.

The street lights were turned off overhead, and a single projection played the video from behind a screen. The work asked viewers to consider something that many may not have before: the experience of Indigenous peoples with black bodies. The video alternated between an artist, Dennis Redmoon Darkeem dancing in regalia in a darkened room and black screens with white text showing excerpts of a conversation with Darkeem about experiences and confrontations he has had as a black bodied Indigenous person. The video shares as we listen in silence and watch in the dark. In front of this work it’s the audience that disappears. Reading puts us in our bodies, potentially, recalling the histories in ourselves as we read about Darkeem’s: the building blocks of empathy.

Maria Hupfield & Jason Lujan, There is No Then and Now, Only Is and Is Not, (photo: Topher & Rae Studios)

If you look long enough, you notice in the video of Darkeem dancing, Hupfield and Lujan have blocked out all of the light in the room except for a spotlight on Darkeem and a red ‘EXIT’ sign overhead. Like “Black Light” that ‘EXIT’ light has stuck with me. As if the video is reminding us that we can leave at any time. It makes me think about where I am: K’jipuktuk, Mi’kma’ki, but also a darkened patch of government property, open to an otherwise brightly lit city. It makes me think about the moment when I will turn and walk away from the video. When I exit and when I stop listening. Making the choice to stay and listen more conscious.

That feeling of being made aware of when I leave, made me come back to Hupfield and Lujan’s installation at the end of the night. When I did, there were more people there than I’d thought. Still listening in the dark.

Artist Sharon Nowlan leads participants in making art using found pebbles. W(here) Festival, Pictou, NS, June 26-30, 2012. Photo: Rita Wilson

Mary MacDonald came home with a purpose. A candidate for an MFA in Criticism and Curatorial Practice at OCAD University, she spent the past year developing her thesis project, the W(here) Festival, which took place all over Pictou County from June 26-30. Asking the question, “where is here?” this arts festival focused on place, the nature of rural communities and the possibility of both engaging local artists and bringing contemporary art practice to places that haven’t had much exposure to the arts.

Twelve events spanned five days, starting with a “kitchen pARTy” where seven local artists talked about their work. Over the next four days there were field trips to an island, woods, beaches and a bridge. An invisible racetrack became visible. There were visiting artists, Marlene Creates and Sheilah Wilson, as well as many local ones. Stories were recounted, history recalled, awards presented—all sparked by place. A conversation about contemporary art in rural communities took place in a high school auditorium. It all closed with the launch of “Memory Factory,” an online project about a local lobster cannery introduced by co-creator David Craig, followed by singer/songwriter Al Tuck singing the festival out.

Mary chose walking field trips as the conceptual link between the idea of place and art practice. Everyone has gone on a field trip; they allow a variety of disciplines and afford an intimacy that promotes conversation. Each trip had a theme: the first group followed Susan Sellers in the footsteps of an island’s “unsung heroine” nurse. The next took people to the iron bridge over the River John where Linda Little read the passage from her book, Strong Hollow, inspired by that very bridge. Sheree Fitch talked about places that create one’s work and places that we create to do that work in. Printmaker Raina MacDonald shared a piece of her art practice—walking in the woods—as she led people through an old foundation, then silently on to a cabin by the Eight Mile Brook. Pebble artist Sharon Nowlan used the beach as her art supply cabinet for workshop participants to make creations.

Both visiting artists explore the idea of place and memory in their work; their projects reflected this. Marlene Creates’ Award Ribbons for Places in Pictou County began at Bayview community hall, where participants decorated ribbons for their chosen places. The next two days they presented ribbons to a swimming hole, a rock, a gingko tree, a garden, a 100-foot channel that no longer exists and many, many beaches. Each place was layered in story: “I used to walk this street every day to school;” “It was all farmland, where the mall is now. I grew up here;” “Welcome to my garden, sunken from the street beside, four steps down …”

Sheila Wilson’s installation at River John’s Lee tik gas station replays locals’ spoken instructions to a legendary race track. W(here) Festival, Pictou, NS, June 26-30, 2012. Photo: Rita Wilson

Participants shared places they loved, weaving a topography of memory. Marlene told them, “This whole landscape now has so much more meaning to me by having heard your stories.”

Mary described the project as “funny, emotional, sad, nostalgic, hopeful, honest … In this way it became reflective of this actual place …”

Sheilah Wilson’s project, The Invisible Inside the Visible, started three years ago, prompted by the rumour of a ghostly racetrack at the end of Cape John. She looked, but didn’t find it—two summers in a row. This summer she recorded local people’s directions to the track: “Down the Cape John Road, now, you come to the big pond;” “It’s funny because I know it was out there. You know, everyone said it was;” “Supposedly, so I’ve been told.”

Sheilah discovered that “the past can exist in various forms of memory.” She says she located the mark of the track, “by feel.” The oval appears now as a raised patch of ground that “you stumble upon.” She installed the project on a picnic table at Lee Tik gas station in River John, where an umbrella shaded a wooden box holding newspapers and headphones replaying people’s spoken directions to the racetrack.

Sheilah’s artist talk was the first ever held at the gas station restaurant. Audience members continued to recall the racetrack “where we picked cranberries.” One person commented: “Well, you’ve really made something out of nothing.”

Mary is intrigued by festivals as a model to present contemporary art: “I love the sense of intimate connection that created in such a short piece of time.” Astounded at the level of passionate and personal engagement, she watched artists communicate a sense of possibility: “I like to think that this project inspired artists to be a bit braver and to share their work more often.”

There were challenges. Created by Mary as a public endeavor, it was a true communal effort and, at times, “a real balancing act.” She felt “like a captain of a big ship navigating the waters, maintaining a sense of thematic and logistical direction … maintaining my curatorial role.” There are cautions too, like the danger of thinking of “rural places as inherently romantic backdrops for projects,” without ensuring collaboration with those who live there.

Months ago, Mary said, “To me, contemporary art is not just the medium we work in, but the relationships we build, the conversations we have, and the objects and experiences we choose to make that reflect the place we live and who we are.” She asked the question, “How can the local, rooted in a sense of place and history, relate to the innovative?” I think she’s begun to answer her own question.