Oneself, and one another

Lita Fontaine, Whess Harman, Meagan Musseau, Rhayne Vermette
Curated by Jennifer Smith
6pm Friday 20 July 2018
The aceartinc. & National Indigenous Media Arts Coalition’s Indigenous Curator In Residence, invite you to the opening of Oneself, and one another.
Funded by The Winnipeg Foundation.The blanket use of the word ‘Indigenous’ can eclipse the incredible diversity within Indigenous cultures across Turtle Island. Oneself, and one another is an exploration of this and the inter-identities of Indigenous artists in Canada. Each of the four artists creates work about their own distinct culture, interests and lives. What we discover is how non-homogenity is itself a defining feature of Indigenous culture, a means of working together, and a source of great power.The great power brings together four artists, who independent of each other explore ideas of gender, multiple cultural identities, tradition, age, territory, the Dakota Nation, the Metis Nation, the Mi’kmaq Nation, Lake Babine Nation, environmental issues, history, punk culture, decolonization, the lives of artists and Indigeneity. Together the artists form an exhibition that places their Indigeneity at the centre, but makes room to celebrate each difference and explore how combined each difference strengthens each other.

Whess Harman is a queer, mixed-race, trans/non-binary artist, born in prince rupert, BC in 1990 and is a member of the Lake Babine Nation. Their work uses multi-media strategies in print, text and illustration to address issues of representation and memory. Whess completed a BFA at emily carr university in 2014. They have attended residencies at the banff art centre in 2014 and 2016 and at plug-in ICA in winnipeg in 2017. On-going work in includes beadwork and DIY strategies around punk aesthetics creating “Indigenous Punk” jacket series, as well as text based wheat-pasting projects.