As if being anything other than White in Halifax doesn’t already make you hyper-visible, the women in Rita Malik’s short film On Being Brown sometimes navigate quintessential Maritime markers wearing gold-embroidered jewel-toned lehengas. Even though it’s an ornate shirt-over-skirt set that South Asian women reserve for celebrations, the women in the film wear lehengas on the Halifax waterfront in interactions with a showboating busker, and in a cramped small-town convenience store. One woman’s floor-length skirt reveals her combat boots while she loiters on Spring Garden Road.

Halifax-based artist Malik chose lehengas for the women in some of the ten-minute video’s scenes—which she produced in 1999 as part of a Centre for Art Tapes (CFAT) program designed to train artists new to video—purely for effect. In a place like Halifax, the choice of traditional South Asian clothing amplifies the women’s pre-existent otherness. It’s a choice that provokes gaping and gawking from White passersby on the waterfront. An enraptured elderly White woman asks Malik about one of the lehenga-wearing women: “Is she a princess?”

Malik’s inquisitive and caring lens explores identity and otherness by toggling between public space, where viewers witness firsthand how White people perceive her subjects, and private space, in which her subjects process how White people relate to them. In private, the three women sit in a living room responding to Malik’s questions from behind the camera: How would you identify yourself? And how would others identify you? A faint malaise sometimes laces their responses. They permit us to eavesdrop on their candid discussions of how being Indian in Canada positions them neither here nor there. They discuss what they might pass onto their children, and how they want to carry their predecessors’ lineages, from which colonialism has severed them. They discuss how they respond to exoticizing interrogations, like “no, where are you really from?” Though Malik wasn’t concerned with foregrounding racism when she made the work, the women’s vulnerable discussions at times reveal their experiences of quintessentially Atlantic racism—in its supposedly benevolent, feigned innocence—that felt deeply relatable for me.

The women’s lived experience mirrors Malik’s own, growing up in a first-generation immigrant household in Sheet Harbour, Nova Scotia. Malik was 32 years old when she made On Being Brown, and she had just returned to Halifax from a six-month trip to India—her first since she was 8 years old. “There was culture shock coming and going,” Malik told me. “That played into my choice of subject matter.” On Being Brown is static in time. I’d consider it to be in the same canon as Andrea Fatona or Richard Fung’s documentary video works in which they interview their subjects about their lived experiences of racism in Canada. Similarly, Fatona and Fung’s subjects address us with vulnerability, and their documentaries feature scenes that situate their subjects geographically (Fatona’s in Hogan’s Alley, Vancouver, and Fung’s in Toronto). The lived experiences articulated in those works are somewhat static in time, and possibly eternally relatable, too.

Perhaps an objective for a BIPOC artist to make this kind of personal documentary work is for posterity. Divya Mehra encountered On Being Brown by accident in CFAT’s archive in 2019, twenty years after Malik made it. Because Malik’s work explored questions of identity and belonging with people who were similarly preoccupied with them, one of the most significant things about its resonance now is that it showed Mehra a precursor for her own early work’s explorations of being a diasporic person in a predominantly White nation state. When Mehra spoke with Malik, they connected over having worked as artists in isolation in the Prairies and in the Maritimes, and feeling like no one would ever care about their work.

For the exhibition “The more things change…,” marking CFAT’s 40th-anniversary, the artist-run centre invited four artists to sift through its archive to make a new piece responding to an artwork they pulled from an assigned previous decade. Unlike the archives of Toronto’s Vtape or Winnipeg’s Video Pool, to which artists’ submissions are automatically included, CFAT’s archive is a product of past exhibitions, which were jury selected. This means the art works selected by a CFAT jury for an exhibition at any given moment became enshrined as the official record of it. Mehra’s assigned decade was 1999–2008, but the contents of CFAT’s predominantly White archive were difficult to access and relate to, let alone respond to, until she found On Being Brown. In turn, Mehra extended the invitation to exhibit Malik’s work, so that her unseen work could be seen.

On Being Brown was the second video Malik had ever produced, and a chronic-fatigue diagnosis made it her last work to enter the public sphere. But beyond its marginal trace in CFAT’s archive, Malik’s work was written out of the record of Atlantic cultural production. This erasure brings up some questions for me: what does it take to be enshrined in art history? How do the ostensibly benign mechanisms of archivemaking and art history writing sever us from the lineages that connect us to our predecessors?

An archive reflects the sensibilities of the people who contributed to its accumulation. When I examine the typically almost all-White exhibition and publication histories of the majority of Settler cultural institutions across this country, I know we can attribute their archives’ overwhelming Whiteness to their historically almost all-White curatorial or editorial teams. If an institution’s decision makers were most likely all White, then how could its archive be anything but almost all White, too?

They say that the archive is designated as a repository, as a witness, as a form of documented memory. An archive is supposed to inform the future by helping us learn from the past. Some of us might take the archive as fact. Some of us might take archive-making as neutral, unbiased and apolitical. But for those of us who must insist on being written into the record, who don’t take for granted that our contributions will be acknowledged and rewarded and remembered, the archive serves a different function. An archive serves to remind us of those who came before us, who asked the same questions, who survived similar violences.

The erasure of Malik’s work from the record of cultural production is tragic. While Malik doesn’t represent anyone but herself, and her story shouldn’t be abstracted into the symbolic, I can’t help but think: how many other artists have the narrative of art history erased in so-called Canada? This erasure reveals the confluence of the many mechanisms of history-making and the long-term consequences of institutional White supremacy. It reveals how something as routine as a jurying process dominated by an inner circle of White people determines who is worthy of getting archived, publicized, historicized, and remembered—and who is not.

Mehra’s alienating encounter with this archive—that’s exclusionary by design—reminded me of my own. During the time I worked for two major Canadian contemporary art magazines, I examined their back issues. I hardly encountered work like Malik’s—to say nothing of the scores of artists whose work these magazines mostly didn’t acknowledge until recent years. When I looked through decades of their mastheads, I also couldn’t find much evidence of my predecessors’ existence.

If I don’t see that someone like me survived before me, how am I to believe that survival—let alone anything beyond—is possible for me? When the record of cultural production severs us from our predecessors, and someone like me sifts through it, I am led to believe its false tales: that no one was here before me. This is just one explanation for the current obsession with firsts; this amnesia is one of the many insidious ways that Settler cultural institutions enable and perpetuate White supremacy.

When we’re alienated from traces of the people before us who survived, we have no blueprints for our own survival. When we’re severed from traces of those who came before us, when we know that those we see in the record now are the ones who resisted erasure from it, we can’t imagine how the record could ever acknowledge our own work. It’s only fitting that Mehra’s response to CFAT’s invitation was to extend it to make space for Malik as one of her predecessors.

Driving my car down the winding Bonavista highway, I remember how many times I’ve done this route – to watch whales, to go for a good slice of pizza, and, since 2017, to see contemporary art.

Growing up in Clarenville, a town an hour and a half away from the Bonavista peninsula, I thought I had to go away to see and make work that excited me. This belief led me to the mainland for art school at the University of Guelph, and then to St. John’s, which was as close to away as I felt I could be while still living in my home province. My practice of painting, collage, and installation explores how our homes and communities contribute to our identities. Shortly after moving from Guelph to St. John’s, I heard of the first Bonavista Biennale and realized it was being held near my hometown on a peninsula I’ve been visiting since childhood.

The excitement was palpable that first year. I felt transported to somewhere large and significant (two ingredients that felt necessary to build an art career at the time), and my misguided belief about the lack of potential in rural Newfoundland and Labrador was shattered. To cement this revelation, I sat on a cliff and watched Will Gill’s unforgettable Green Chair be endlessly pummelled by waves.

This success created anticipation for the Biennale’s second run in 2019. In the middle of my road trip, I stood in a quiet room to face the work of Camille Turner, The Afronautic Research Lab, which untangled the involvement of our province in the Atlantic slave trade. This Biennale asked me, as a settler of this land, to turn inward, with curiosities and questions about this place I call home. Turner’s work invited us to critique our believed history with a critical lens and ask: what other stories haven’t been told?

This past year, with the pandemic transforming the global experience, staying home has been our new reality. With restrictions lifting, the 2021 edition of the Bonavista Biennale took place from August 14 – September 12, which is a large achievement after months of unpredictability. Curators Patricia Grattan and Matthew Hills write about this year’s theme, The Tonic of Wildness, as “healing re-engagement with the world beyond digital screens,” which is something we all benefit from as our lives have been thwarted by devices.

The Bonavista Biennale’s most historically significant exhibition is REGENERATION | Piguttaugiallavalliajuk | USSANITAUTEN, which features a group of seven photographers—Eldred Allen, Jennie Williams, Holly Anderson, Samantha Pilgrim Jacque, Wayne Broomfield, Melissa Tremblett and Gary Anderson—all from Northern Labrador, who are exploring their connection to the natural world.

Curator Jessica Winters underscores the importance of including artists who don’t often see themselves in these spaces and how this can change the perception of Inuit art. Winters explains, “Inuit art is usually in a medium that’s really traditional and stereotypical, so this show is a take on seeing our life and culture through a new form. The work documents how relationships to our environment can change, and how we still use the land and animals.” This project is a new addition to the Biennale from previous years and offers a strong start to the festival’s lineup at the very first site.

 In addition to this exhibition, artists are installed at different locations across the peninsula. Artist Philippa Jones has created a space of secular wonder within the renovated Alexander Mortuary Chapel of All Souls in Bonavista. Orbs of cast resin float on a string and in a glittering pool that we are invited to dip our feet into. When examined, each sphere contains plants and organic matter, preserved in plastic and removed from the cycle of life, death, and decay. There is a simultaneous sense of playful joy in the pool and quiet contemplation in the accompanying drawing across the room, which changes from death to life in front of our eyes.

In Upper Amherst Cove, Gerald Beaulieu offers a glimpse into the prehistoric past with his work Extinction. His life-size replica of an Albertosaurus skeleton is impossible to drive by without stopping to take it in. Each hand-carved bone glistens with tar, and the black liquid drips from its giant jaws, reminding us that oil is a slow and unsustainable poison for us and the environment around us.

Behind the aquarium in Champney’s West sits Melanie Colosimo’s work Sync or Swim. Stuffed life preservers are submerged in an industrial fish tub, with their reflective strips glowing through windows that allow us to peer into the water. By drowning the life savers, whose typical function is to keep us afloat, Colosimo strips them of their purpose, and makes viewers reflect on the ironic way Atlantic provinces rely on the trade of goods in industries that often cause them to be left without. The preservers are linked together as we are as a region, in an attempt to keep our communities alive.

Unhistoric Acts, an installation by Robyn Love, uses the permanent structure of the fish flakes near the Mockbeggar Plantation as its site, but instead of fish we find carefully embroidered names supporting the fishing stage. Each fish flake represents a woman who worked, unpaid and unacknowledged, for the fishery economy. The black fabric of one stage basks in the summer sun, as the fish once did, while the sheer blue fabric covering the other stage erases it into the sky, almost unnoticed. This work acts as a tribute to forgotten labour. Also, with each woman named Mary—after Mary March/ Demasduit, a Beothuk woman born in 1796 and died in 1820 in Botwood—being stitched in red, it invites the remembrance of the erased history of Indigenous women who were renamed to be assimilated into Settler culture. Each thread in Love’s work symbolizes care for and reconnection with those who have been left out of history.

The work of Logan MacDonald further explores the erasure of communities, and how symbols of colonialism are protected while Indigenous and queer histories are untold and overwritten. MacDonald’s land-based installation was intended to engage with Bonavista’s bronze statue of John Cabot by covering it in mulch to temporarily erase it from the landscape, and then inviting the community to repurpose the mulch in their own gardens and trails.

After five months of planning, the permission to use the statue was revoked by the town of Bonavista and MacDonald was forced to create a new installation for Long Beach, his new site location. Ultimately, no matter the final iteration of the work, MacDonald is asking critical questions, like “what histories are we protecting that are connected to our landscapes, and why are we not making space for other histories or culturally significant moments?”

If you see a sign on the beach asking you to enter at your own risk, it might not be about the water. Sites around the peninsula also include work by 18 participating artists from across the province and country, including Will Gill, Vessela Brakalova, Michael Jonathon Pittman, Graeme Patterson, Leslie Reid, Jonathan S. Green, Marlene Creates, Christina Battle, asinnajaq, and many more. Curator Matthew Hills highlights the importance of collaboration between the work and the peninsula, explaining in a phone interview how “the Biennale is an incredible event, unique in the country and internationally significant to my mind in terms of the way it responds [to] and embeds contemporary art, and that is partially about how special the peninsula is.” The 2021 Bonavista Biennale urged viewers to go out and ask questions, experience wonder, and explore the natural environment. It was the perfect wild tonic after months of being trapped indoors.

Stemming from generations of near-forgotten knowledge, Carley Mullally’s work transfigures discarded marine detritus into thoughtful contemporary artworks by employing traditional maritime rope making and net repair methods.

Originating from New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, Mullally discovered sewing at a very young age. This led her to diligently pursue fashion and garment making during her adolescent years. Unsatisfied with the limited selection and availability of local fabric, Mullally was excited to discover the art of textile creation during her studies at NSCAD University in Halifax. It was during her time at art school—and while studying under celebrated textile artist Toshiko MacAdam—she discovered a passion for the structure of fabrics made both on and off the loom, such as knitting, crocheting, and knotting.

After completing her BFA in 2015, Mullally moved to London, England to pursue grad school at the Royal College of Art. Mullally’s time away from home inspired her to study rope making and braiding, a tradition that reminded her of her birthplace. These techniques grew to become integral to her practice.

In 2018, Mullally returned to Halifax to teach off-loom structures at NSCAD, replacing her retired mentor, MacAdam. Due to COVID-19, she had to immediately adapt her plans as the pandemic struck and lockdowns went into effect.

Mullally completed the Craft LAIR residency at the Centre for Craft Nova Scotia, the Visual Arts Nova Scotia Summer Artist in Residence program in New Glasgow, and an Artist Residency at the Chester Art Centre. These activities involved public engagement and required the use of lockdown-driven digital communication strategies that have become a meaningful part of Mullally’s practice. Her work has been installed in public spaces like Halifax’s waterfront to spark conversation around environmental issues.

Mullally believes that maritime material culture can be instrumental in connecting with her community. She now regularly receives donations of old fishing equipment from the public. This collaborative process is integral to her work in the upcoming Symbiosis group exhibition at the Mary E. Black Gallery in Fall 2021.

Mullally’s art process began as a frugal strategy by combing beaches and the local seascape for debris. She scavenged and gathered discarded objects like damaged fishing nets and stray lobster claw bands to use as source materials. This practice led her to discover the magnitude of marine pollution and propelled her practice to consider environmental issues, which has led her to work with the Ecology Action Centre on a public art project.

In this industrial age, where damaged objects are replaced rather than mended, Mullally’s work focuses on repair. She carefully reconstructs damaged nets using all-butforgotten techniques. This process of repair is a metaphor of personal battles with mental health and healing, and the work results in striking artworks depicting interventions of renewal. In many ways, Mullally’s pieces speak to the resilience in her personal life through the action of patching, darning, and mending. However, her work also refers to the resilience of fading knowledge, practices, methods, and techniques that are no longer valued in a global market of consumerism. Mullally’s work also addresses the durability and power of the elements in nature. Mullally is a curious tinkerer and creates most of her own tools and machines. She is deeply interested in seeing the revival of these traditional craft practices in contemporary contexts. In her NSCAD classes, she is delighted when students use ancient techniques such as macramé to create sculptural structures and forms.

Mullally is devoted to the teaching of all ages and abilities and believes in the healing power of craft, much like the distinguished occupational therapist Mary E. Black, who taught soldiers to weave as a means of alleviating symptoms of post-traumatic stress.

In Mullally’s work, I see cycles: the cyclical repetitious motion of knot making and stitching, the life cycle of objects, the tidal cycle that washes a wreckage ashore, and the cycles of everyday suffering and healing. Her pieces give the viewer a glimpse into Nova Scotian marine history and culture whilst also revealing personal vulnerability and strength.