Place Based Art Exploration

For my Visual Arts Education class we we’re to learn about and explore the concept of place based art. For my personal project of place based art I chose to make chalk drawings in various neighbourhoods throughout Regina.

I drew images of First Nations/ Aboriginal women wearing masks. Originally, the purpose of my place based art was to draw attention to the missing and murdered First Nations and Aboriginal women in Canada. This is a very important issue because there is a significantly larger amount of murdered and missing First Nations and Aboriginal women compared to non-Aboriginal women.     Above is the first image I made and the higher income neighborhood area I made it in. And below is the second image I made in North Central and images of that surrounding neighborhood

The reason the women are wearing masks is because even though they are there, many people do not see them, their issues, or their stories. For some reason there is something that is blocking peoples ability to see these women and their stories. I wanted to draw attention to this issue.

I related this to place based art in two ways. One, I drew a picture in a higher income area with a low demographic of First Nations and Aboriginal people to try and draw it to their attention. And two, I drew another in North Central, an area with a very high demographic of Aboriginal people. This is place based art because both neighbourhoods should recognize this as a concerning issue. Canada is a shared place between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people, we should all share this concern.

Chalk is nice… although it is not really ideal for place based art. Bellow is the start of a study for a larger and more permanent idea for a place based art project. In my idea of a perfect world this would be a large mural somewhere in a first nations community. I would make it with young artists from a school with a larger number of First Nations students. The idea is to show the happenings of First Nations people and our history. The idea is that once we were tall and strong, then because of disease and colonization we fell. But now we are rising again, and with the help of others we can rise again.

Making such a piece would open many doors for learning. For myself and my own learning for example, when making this piece and researching images of Saulteaux chiefs and men, I could not help but notice their intricate clothing and the articles that they wore. This caused me to think about and explore what the purpose was behind their articles of clothing and jewellery. So I am not only learning and practicing my visual literacy and drawing skills, but I am also learning about my ancestors history and my personal culture. This helps me get a better sense of when I come from and therefore gives me a stronger sense of identity, not to mention immense pride in my personal culture.

Even further, we could explore the social, political, and economic forces behind colonization. We would gain a better understanding of Canadian history and we could also explore the immediate, and lingering effects of residential schools.

In the background of this piece I am planning on drawing an image of a residential school behind the fallen figure, then behind the figures that are rising, I would like to incorporate things that symbolize what have helped me personally get up, as well as examples of things that have helped other people get up; namely family, community, and the arts.

The figure at the very end, i would like to leave blank. The reason for this is because I do not want it to be specifically a man or woman, Caucasian or Aboriginal, Pastor or Medicine Man, Spirit or Family member, ect. to be portrayed as the one helping us up. The idea is that we are rising and we all have different people and influences that are pulling us up. Regardless, we are rising.

It would be easy to think that this piece of art could cause feelings of resentment or bitterness towards European people but I want to stress that this is not my intention at all. It would be easy to be bitter, but for myself it does not make sense. What happened happened and we cant change it. Further, there is a difference between making people bitter or feeling bad about what their ancestors did and making people aware. The reality is colonization and residential schools did happen and they were devastating, but as my grandmother would say “there is not use crying over spilled milk”.

There are links here of an official RCMP document that writes about addressing the issue, as well as a Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women and Girls Fact Sheet.