Vernon Ah Kee Cantchant (we grew here), Detail, 2009. Video, 12 painted surfboards and 9 acrylic paintings on canvas. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Purchased 2010©. Courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery Photo © NGC
“The National Gallery of Canada is staging one of the most ambitious contemporary art exhibitions in its history. With installations filling both floors of our special exhibition spaces as well as our contemporary art galleries—not to mention several public spaces inside and outside the Gallery—Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art is Canada’s must-see exhibition this year.”
Sakahàn—meaning “to light [a fire]” in the language of the Algonquin peoples—brings together more than 150 works of recent Indigenous art by over 80 artists from 16 countries, including Aboriginal artists as Vernon Ah Kee, Richard Bell, Jonathan Jones, Danie Mellor, and Warwick Thornton. Sakahàn received also the support of an international team of curatorial advisors including the Australian artist Brenda Croft. This exhibition is the first in an ongoing series of surveys of Indigenous art. The artworks in Sakahàn provide diverse responses to what it means to be Indigenous today. Through their works, the artists engage with ideas of self-representation to question colonial narratives and present parallel histories; place value on the handmade; explore relationships between the spiritual, the uncanny and the everyday; and put forward highly personal responses to the impact of social and cultural trauma. The artworks range from video installations to sculptures, drawings, prints, paintings, performance art, murals and other new, site-specific projects created specifically for this exhibition.
Sakahàn features stunning and intricate works, such as an exquisite sculpture of a zippered shirt carved entirely from wood and a pair of masterfully shaped stone hands held together by a chain. Also included are monumental pieces, including a column comprised of 300 folded and stacked blankets that were donated by the public, a 50-metre-long banner hung above the colonnade ramp, and a commanding installation that transforms the façade of the Great Hall of the National Gallery of Canada into a work of art.