Visual and Media Arts

Imagining the distant past: the challenges of film reenactment - CANCELLED

Masterclass with Michel Poulette

Michel Poulette directed a soon to be released feature film set in Pre-Columbian America. The film narrates events occurring in the confrontations between Innu and Inuit, whose oral traditions retain memory traces. How can we achieve a credible, precise image of locations and people of such long-ago days? What work did it take to make this film, alongside anthropoligists, archaeologists, contemporary descendants, the art direction and actors? And the underlying question of questions: can cinema bring ancient history to life?

Cinémathèque québécoise
Satudray, August 3 at 3:00pm

 

Kaouwi, Kaouwi

Curator: Tess Allas

Cicada Press is a research group within the School of Art at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales (COFA UNSW).

For the past six years Cicada Press have been working closely with a number of Aboriginal artists from across the country building the Aboriginal print portfolio.

This selection of prints is indicative of the work produced at Cicada Press since 2006. It showcases the depth of talent and experience that the Aboriginal artists who spend time in the printmaking studios at COFA bring with them. Some of the artworks are narrative-based, some are stories of memory, identity and tradition whilst others should be considered conceptual art albeit with a particular Australian Aboriginal twist.

*Kaouwi Kaouwi means ‘ ‘come here’ in the language of the Aboriginal people from Sydney. This word his since become known as ‘Cooee’ - a common call across Australia gaining in popularity in the 20th century. The contemporary meaning has changed to meaning ‘announcing oneself in a friendly manner’.

Kanien’kehá : ka Onkwawén : na Raotitióhkwa Kahnawake
From July 31 to August 30

 

LA MARCHE À LA TERRE / Les femmes de la 138

Photo exhibition on Innu women’s march

In April 2012, a group of Innu women undertook a 900-kilometre walk along route 138 in reaction to exploitation of their land by the Quebec government and its hydroelectric company.

This march rebuilt the network of many links uniting the Innu people and Nitassinan, their ancestral land. While demonstrating politically and making territorial demands, the march became an act of life and a contemporary version of nomadic journeys. A new portage trail was marked out, following many survival roads whose lineaments have silently crisscrossed all of Quebec for many millennia. Visiting the Earth, travelling as a community, as they prayed and shared emotions, they strengthened the sovereign bonds between humans and Nitassinan. On their ancestral soil they recovered the meaning of brotherhood that has ensured the continuity of the Innu nation since days of old.

The Route 138 March was a gathering in honour of the Earth, a founding member of our human family; and these women, all led by the same sacred walking stick, traced a pathway that we must choose to follow or ignore: the path of awareness and responsibility as living beings in this world.

Place des Festivals
Friday 2, Saturday 3 and Sunday 4 of August

Ginette Aubin - The Path of Belonging

Recent work

Ginette Aubin is part of the Wu-las’-tukw (Maliseet) of Quebec, descendent of the Mi’kmaw. Renowned painter and engraver, she finds her inspiration from her origins to create her unique universe. Well beyond the liveliness of certain colored areas, the ardor of the line and daring compositions, she paints to let her people be known, and its culture to leave to future generations as a cherishable gift. What emerges isn’t a past she has left behind from which she kept nostalgia, but rather her work, which is the reason we were convened to the emergence of a present time whose duty it is to last.

Guilde canadienne des métiers d’art
1460-B, rue Sherbrooke West
514 849-6091
From July 17 to August 10

 

Là ou est notre maison

Jeunes graveurs mohawks

For three years, from 2007 to 2010, le Centre de l’Image et de l’Estampe de Mirabel (CIEM), hosted fifteen young Amerindians from Kanehsatake. Several of the works they created during their internship at CIEM are featured in the travelling exhibition Where our Home is.

During this apprenticeship program, the young artists had the opportunity to familiarize themselves with traditional printmaking techniques and new image technologies, and access high-quality equipment, thanks to CIEM, which conducts a production workshop where different artists work together. It is a spotlight for creation and motor for cultural events in the Lower Laurentians region.

Each year, the young Mohawks could explore a specific theme. Mythology, Identity and Territory, in turn, provided pathways for their inspiration. So, as time went by, they interpreted their own world as they trained in wood engraving, copperplate engraving and digital engraving.

First Peoples’ Festival gained the opportunity to witness this trailblazing effort by joining forces with CIEM to provide visibility and a broader audience to the exhibit culminating a year’s work by each cohort. Now we are presenting an anthology of prints summing up their path and providing a retrospective look at a very novel process. Where our Home is features great diversity in terms of inspiration and execution and spotlights sparkling creativity.

Printmaking is a demanding art with no tolerance for mistakes. These young artists succeeded in keeping alive a frank and fresh vision along their initiatory learning path, allowing them to find elegant solutions to the difficulties inherent to the perilous process they so valiantly undertook. Today, they are offering us creations marked by exceptional purity and conveying great, splendid pride. The arts give us access to Mohawk society. Through the works they present, these young Kanehsatake printmakers open doors to their universe, and more personally still, to their homes. Via this medium, they were able to discover, seize upon, reveal, and finally, convey their rich heritage and high hopes. Under the sign of high fantasy, they reveal the constellation of their ideals in the great starry space of their collective imagination.

Through these prints, the young Kanehsatakeronon become our guides along roads of truth and honesty, where we find the ancient traces of their Mohawk Nation ancestors at every turn. A piece of America opened to discover with the heart’s eyes.

Centre culturel de Verdun
5955, rue Bannantyne, Montréal
514 765-7170
From July 24 to September 1