Aboriginal Collaborative Exchange – “The REQUICKENING Project” Venice 52

Aboriginal artists have a proactive role in our diverse communities. Whether they are urban, suburban, rural, or reserve, they secure, critique, innovate and share the cultural knowledge, spirit and traditions of our nations. Artists, curators, art historians and cultural workers continue into the new millennium as participants of our own legacy; writing, producing, documenting, administrating and defining a distinct art historical discourse we can claim as our own. While the margins created by a Western culture may still be present, the Aboriginal arts community stakes a passionate claim to be seen, heard and acknowledged within each artistic discipline. The Aboriginal arts movement traverses and widens the sphere of contested spaces in this age of globalization.

Across the great pond in the “Old World,” we have been privileged and honoured to acknowledge an Aboriginal presence at the Venice Biennale. The international art world has witnessed the provocative and outstanding work by Edward Poitras in 1995 and Fountain (2005) by Rebecca Belmore, at the 51st edition of the 2005 Venice Biennale. The collective Indigenous Arts Action Alliance (IA3) has successfully sponsored three Biennale exhibits (1999, 2001, 2003). In 2005, the National Museum of the American Indian “borrowed” IA3’s merited space for its presentation and entrance to the Venice Biennale with performance artist James Luna’s Emendatio. 

Even as we see these spaces open up and become accessible, an indigenous presence is still imperfect in international art venues. We wish to further the discourse of an Indigenous art history as relevant to our own communities and a global audience. If we are not a participant in Venice 2007, our presence may be forgotten. We see the Venice Biennale is a site of triumph.

It is through the 52 edition of the Venice Biennale where IA3 representative Nancy Marie Mithlo will continue to pursue the goal of establishing an Indigenous presence through her invitation to exchange and collaborate collectively with performance artist and Tribe Inc., director Lori Blondeau, artist/filmmaker Shelley Niro, artist/curator Ryan Rice and Italian coordinator Elisabetta Frasca. The aim of the group is exemplified in its title THE REQUICKENING PROJECT; a reference to the Iroquois condolence ceremony that rectifies states of fragility, and ensuring life continues to flourish. Our exchange and dialogue will ensure and establish a continuum in Aboriginal curatorial practice that will examine community as well as mainstream tactics for making “our” space accessible, vigorous and on a par to the international standards the biennale upholds.

How will this aboriginal presence in Venice conceptualize success?  Contrary to inclusion models that require self-sacrifice of ideals, our collective agenda calls upon indigenous knowledges to contribute to the conversation initiated by the Biennale curator Robert Storr.  Our presence seeks to speak of how indigenous people conceptualize the fragility of life, how art speaks to understanding death and destruction as well as the process of healing.  Our dialogue will consider carefully how to avoid an overworked reaction, or response to the hegemonic values of the West.  We will need to consider strategies for a pro-active exhibition style and methodology to be employed in the process of taking a place with other artists of international standing. Blondeau will create, re-assemble, disassemble and perform States of Grace, inspired by her recent work Grace. Shelley Niro will project her short film Tree across the Italian city’s facade.  Both works will invite audiences to witness the relevance and criticality in which traditional knowledge has upon global issues and the human condition. States of Grace will reveal many instances of human vulnerability through Blondeau’s acts of memory, home, displacement, and decolonization. Her performances will expose an Aboriginal perspective of suffering and pain, healing and hope. Niro’s short film Tree pays homage to the “Keep America Beautiful” campaign from the early 1970’s where stoic actor Iron Eyes Cody gazes at the environment and sees it is no longer being cared for or respected. Niro replaces Cody, the perpetual Indian stereotype, with a matriarchal figure who witnesses the same environmental degradation, some 30 years later.  Our efforts seek to make an intellectual statement concerning aboriginal wisdom in the visual and expressive arts. We wish to articulate this beauty through careful workings of body movement, moving images, sound, place, space and contextualization via authorship of essays. We will interpret contemporary manifestations of Indigenous wisdom by reference to the elegant work of Niro and Blondeau. These expressions are in simultaneous interaction with the project curators and coordinators, refining, challenging and seeking the clearest and most direct statement, given the opportunity that the Biennale affords.  The meta-narratives as they unfold form a basis for new conceptual reasoning, an advanced level of participation in future exhibitions and a more solid presence as unique artistic worlds. The global stage requires our participation. 

Nancy Marie Mithlo and Ryan Rice, Curators

Shelley Niro and Lori Blondeau, Artists

Elisabetta Frasca, Director