TRAILS AND TERRITORIES, HOW MEMORY TRAVELS.

Artists’ books are works of art in their own right. Like engraving or sculpture, artists’ books can be counted among the many forms of artistic expression. They do retain a link with books, through their form, text or function.

This specific, intimist art form is also called a book-object.

Words undergo metamorphosis. They become tangible – turn into rhythm, visual games, images or concrete objects. This creation lies on the borderline between books and sculpture.

Artists’ books emphasise the overlap between disciplines, fields of experimentation and processes rather than their own limits.

The balance or tension between the materials and thought become a vehicle to convey the artistic expression each work embodies. Concepts such as page, text, image or illustration, binding and narration take on unexpected meanings. Signs, shapes, content and context create unique ensembles. We gain access to an imaginary world through a book whose pages keep on turning.

SPACES OF CREATION

The works proposed share in the firm commitment to create open works that can be doors onto different universes. These works and these universes are at once intimate and expressive of their communities.

The materials, techniques used and sources of inspiration are permeated by the idea of a book as a territory to cross. Whether this space is urban or natural, it calls out to be explored. Its cartography will rely on personal and poetic geographies revealed through the complex realities these artists’ experience. Some of the elements of these works may flow directly from tradition, but as they take shape as artists’ books, they are transformed into contemporary works.

The artists who took up this challenge with such enthusiasm have all experienced veritable upheavals in their creative process through their involvement in the project. Many of their certainties are no longer applicable. The effort to produce a synthesis implicit in work on a book-object has led several of them to exceed themselves.

THE ARTISTS

FRANÇOIS NEWASHISH, Attikamekw.
“ Spruce roots as seams, white birch bark for the cover and the pages, moose hide for the binding and decorations made from feathers, bone and beads. As for the subject of my book, it will bear upon the six seasons of the Attikamekw. ”

JEAN-PIERRE PELCHAT, Cree.
“ Creating an artist’s book describing the seven members of my family has been one of the most important steps in my life as an artist. Each page of the book will have a painted image of a relative, a sampling of what they create, their dreams and fears... The book will be a visual biography of my family members. ”

DOLORÈS CONTRÉ-MIGWANS, Odawa Mixed-Blood.
“ I see time as a matter too. It is part of the environment, as tangible as water and earth. Knowledge is the continuation of experience as a sort of living story that can be found in oral tradition rather than in a book, a current flowing from the past and penetrating into what is taking place now... ”

CHRISTINE SIOUI WAWANOLOATH, Abenaki - Wendat.
“ I devised a short poem especially to make an artist’s book from it. It speaks of a bear cub, a mountain and infinite time. ”

GEORGETTE OBOMSAWIN, Abenaki.
“ I propose to tell short anecdotes from my childhood at Odanak... ”

GLENNA MATOUSH, Cree.
“ Happiness is movement. It means a project without end. ”

SYLVIE BERNARD, Abenaki.
“ Homage to my father is a portable photo album, made from lambskin and assembled with metallic staples, cotton threads and nylon decorated with glass beads. This reversible garment tells the story of a man, conveys his culture and celebrates the goodness of humanity. It illustrates the fatherhood and generosity of the chief of the Wôlinak Abenakis, Raymond Bernard. It contains faces of children among the over two hundred he has fostered since 1988 through World Vision. ”

VIRGINIA PÉSÉMAPÉO BORDELEAU, Cree.
“ The title of the artist’s book, Homage to Sibi, is a reference to my sister’s Amerindian name, which means river. These projects are part of a healing process, after the loss of my sister, of course, but also in terms of all the injuries inflicted on the Amerindian in me. Cécile/ Sibi is watching over us, carried by the words she left to us, as the Amerindian spirit continues to live through the objects created by our ancestors. ”

RAYMOND DUPUIS, Malecite.
“ I attempt above all to reconfigure forgotten and lost territories to explore the ill-defined vision of our uprooting. ”

STEVE MCCOMBER, Mohawk.
“ The Great Tree of Peace, our Grandmother Moon and so many other spirits sculpted in the primeval elements of Iroquois culture. ”

SYLVAIN RIVARD, Metis.
“ An ethnobotanical herbarium developed from the plants used by the Wabanakiak nations. The pages are made from recycled paper incrusted with materials such as maize leaves, sunflower petals, pine needles, and threeleaf goldthread roots. ”

GINETTE AUBIN, Malecite.
“ I wanted to contribute to a better understanding of the who the Malecite people are. However I remain keenly aware of where I came from and the people I live among. I simply want to foster greater sensitivity among people and more attention to the beauty of First Nations arts. ”

ASHUKAN, (Isabelle Courtois and Jean-Pierre Fontaine, Innu).
“ ...Our book contains no writing but on its pages there is a scene of an Innu grandmother’s teachings to grandchildren sitting around her and listening to her attentively. ”

PAULINE LAHACHE, Mohawk.
“ Under the title Iroquois Ceremonies this artist's book project is an exalting means of creating a unique work based on elements inherent to Mohawk culture. The ceremony cycle is made up of nine ceremonies celebrated in the Longhouses of the Confederation of the Five Iroquois Nations. ”

RAPHAËL BENEDICT, Abenaki.
“ By means of engraving and digital printing, I would like to explore my quest for identity, drawing inspiration from photographs of myself as a child, an adolescent and an adult. A constantly mutating self-portrait... ”

Between the emblematic figure of her grandfather and the more enigmatic presence of a Malecite princess, Ginette Aubin unfurls the banner of her territorial identities. Stone speaks and the artist holds the ancient speech that her grandfather enables her to hear. The petroglyphs the Malecites have left us are the essential signs of her history.

When the artist traces the lines of the petroglyphs, the forms of her gesture reveal how iconic these images from an other time are. She brings them over to our side of time. They are witnesses whose fleeting presence, almost apparitions, cast light on original places.

And yet, hers is a work of patience and not urgency. Firstly, the patience of stones. They carry meanings that allow us to read the real and symbolic territories of the First Peoples, then the calm patience of a grandfather who still knew how to hear the ancient voices and pass along their legacy. Beyond certain vivid colours here and there, her impetuous gestures and audacious compositions, we can sense the artist’s own patience, as she collects the authentic signs of her belonging. Her works are markers on the quest for identity.

Ginette Aubin makes no attempt to revive the past. What emerges from lost time is not to be rescued by our nostalgia. We are called upon to attend the becoming of a present that never stops taking place. The carved surface thereby becomes the space where the mark of the ancient Malecites and the artist’s gestures merge to create a new language, a living word.

AN ART AND A PLACE TO DISCOVER

As early as the Contact period, the First Nations learned the art of embroidery that later became a widespread practice in the workshops of religious congregations.

Taken from the private collection of Mr Sylvain Rivard, a selection of traditional headgear (hats, bonnets, headbands and headdresses) give us a glimpse of the talents of First Peoples craftspeople and their remarkable capacity to adapt foreign techniques to their own needs.

Contemporary pieces by Abenaki craftspeople Johanne Lachapelle from Odanak and Sylvie Bernard from Wolinak round out this exhibit.