Curator in Residence-grunt gallery

Tania Willard Appointed  grunt gallery Resident Curator

The grunt gallery welcomes Tania Willard as resident curator August 2009 – August 2010. This residency is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts Assistance to Aboriginal Curators for Residencies in Visual Arts program. During her residency Willard will be working on several projects. Initially she will focus on completing the exhibition and dissemination of Beat Nation and the editing of brunt issue 5. In the coming year she will be coordinating an exhibition of the work of Nicholas Galanin and developing an exhibition of emerging Northern Artists. One theme running through these projects is the transformation and resurgence of cultural knowledge and values through new forms and media whether it be hip hop, film and video or web based media.. These projects will involve travel based research investigating the contexts in which the next generation of emerging and young Inuit and Northern artists live and work.

Ndn Comix

 

Native Pride

Native artists have been working with carricature and image since early depictions of cowboy colonists on horseback getting an arrow shower. A recent exhibition at the Smithsonian American Indian Museum curates an outstanding collection of Aboriginal artists who work with comix or other allied illustrative styles. Including artists like Navajo artist Jolene Nenibah Yazzie and her Warrior Women series this show puts non-Native comix out there that feature Indians hunting dinosaurs or just being cannon fodder for cowboy’s to shame. My own work in comix has featured a re-telling of Aboriginal worker’s history as well as Secwepemc stories and legends. Working with Vancouver’s Healthy Aboriginal Network I have helped to letter and layout several great projects illustrated by Steven Keewatin Sanderson that use comix as a way to create positive messages and health issue awareness for Aboriginal youth. Inspired by comix like Super Shamoo, an Inuit superhero on the early Inuit Broadcasting Corporation turned comic to create awareness around glue sniffing, I worked with Redwire Magazine to create an all NDN comix version of the magazine that continues to be a collector’s edition of the mag. Native editorial and politic comics artist the late Everett Soop’s life and work was on display at the Galt Musuem, Everett Soop referred to himself as “the pit bull terrier of native journalism.” a member of the Kainai Nation, Everett’s biting commentary is an inspiration for many Aboriginal comic artists. I am excited to see his work memorialized. To read more about my own work and interest in Native comics check out this interview with Broken Pencil.