Olivia Whetung

First presented at the Contemporary Art Gallery in 2019, Olivia Whetung’s solo exhibition, Sugarbush Shrapnel, will tour to the Campbell River Art Gallery this fall.

### Biography
Olivia Whetung is a member of Curve Lake First Nation and a citizen of the Nishnaabeg Nation. Her work has been the focus of solo exhibitions at Gallery 44, Toronto (2018); Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art, Kelowna (2018); Artspace, Peterborough (2017); and 180 Projects, Sault Ste. Marie. She has contributed to two-person and group exhibitions at Queen’s University, Kingston (2019); Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas (2018-19); Textile Museum of Canada, Toronto (2018); Art Gallery of Mississauga (2018); Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa (2017); Access Gallery, Vancouver (2016); Western Front, Vancouver (2016); VIVO Media Arts Centre, Vancouver (2016); Open Space, Victoria (2014); and many others. She completed her BFA with a minor in Anishinaabemowin at Algoma University (2013) and her MFA in Visual Art at the University of British Columbia (2016). She was awarded the John Hartman Award in 2018, the William and Meredith Saunderson Prize for Emerging Artists in 2016, and is a recipient of a CGS-M Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Award and an Aboriginal Graduate Fellowship. In 2019 she was awarded a Joseph S. Stauffer Prize by the Canada Council for the Arts.


An image detail of a wood veneer panel with a rendering of a hummingbird drinking nectar out of a flower. The rendering is composed of bead-embroidered and wood-burned lines.

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Sugarbush Shrapnel

Join us for a conversation on food sovereignty, environmental sustainability and knowledge transfer with artist Olivia Whetung, Indigenous governance scholar Clifford Atleo and exploratory designer Nicole Preissl, who will lead a research/creation project on plants and place at the Burnaby Art Gallery later this fall.

This event is organized by CAG in partnership with the [Burnaby Art Gallery](https://www.burnaby.ca/things-to-do/arts-and-heritage/burnaby-art-gallery.html) and [Emily Carr University of Art + Design](https://www.ecuad.ca/).

### Biographies 

Olivia Whetung is a member of Curve Lake First Nation and a citizen of the Nishnaabeg Nation. Her work has been the focus of solo exhibitions at Gallery 44, Toronto (2018); Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art, Kelowna (2018); Artspace, Peterborough (2017); and 180 Projects, Sault Ste. Marie. She has contributed to two-person and group exhibitions at Queen’s University, Kingston (2019); Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas (2018-19); Textile Museum of Canada, Toronto (2018); Art Gallery of Mississauga (2018); Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa (2017); Access Gallery, Vancouver (2016); Western Front, Vancouver (2016); Axe Neo 7, Gatineau; VIVO Media Arts Centre, Vancouver (2016); Open Space, Victoria (2014); and many others. She completed her BFA with a minor in Anishinaabemowin at Algoma University (2013) and her MFA in Visual Art at the University of British Columbia (2016). She was awarded the John Hartman Award in 2018, the William and Meredith Saunderson Prize for Emerging Artists in 2016, and is a recipient of a CGS-M Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Award and an Aboriginal Graduate Fellowship. In 2019 she was awarded a Joseph S. Stauffer Prize by the Canada Council for the Arts.

Clifford Atleo is a Tsimshian (Kitsumkalum/Kitselas) and Nuu-chah-nulth (Ahousaht) scholar who researches Indigenous governance, community development and political economy. His doctoral research focuses on the political economy of the Ahousaht on the west coast of Vancouver Island, in both historical and contemporary contexts. He is interested in how Indigenous communities navigate/adopt/resist mainstream capitalism while working to sustain their unique cultural identities, practices and worldviews. Atleo is particularly interested in how Indigenous communities and leaders continue to assert agency within the confines of settler colonial politics and economics. Atleo is an Assistant Professor in the School of Resource & Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University.

Nicole Preissl graduated from the ECUAD Bachelor of Design program in 2019, with a focus on indigenizing design creation and teaching. She is an explorative designer who uses natural materials to influence her work. From both Sto:lo and Squamish descent, Preissl began introducing traditional artistic customs into her practice as a means of connecting to her culture. She does this by passing along sacred teachings from elders and community members alike, while introducing people to natural ways of making with Indigenous materials. She currently works as an artist and instructor for the EartHand Gleaners Society and continues to lead participatory walks that include sharing knowledge and ethics of stewardship and foraging. Preissl is an active alumna and Emily Carr community member, passing on her knowledge to others through workshops in the Aboriginal Gathering Place. During Fall/Winter 2019/2020, she will be leading a research/creation commission with the Burnaby Art Gallery around local plants, foods, and stories embedded into place.


An image detail of a wood veneer panel with a rendering of flowers blooming. The rendering is composed of bead-embroidered and wood-burned lines.

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Olivia Whetung in conversation with Clifford Atleo and Nicole Preissl

Talk

Join us as four artists reflect together on the many shared concerns of their practices, with the discussion moderated by CAG Curator Kimberly Phillips and Vancouver Art Gallery’s Senior Curatorial Fellow of Indigenous Art, Tarah Hogue.

A collaboration between the Contemporary Art Gallery and the Vancouver Art Gallery, this event seeks to register and draw out issues of hospitality, presence and the politics of refusal on the occasion of these artists’ concurrent and upcoming exhibitions in Vancouver.

### Biographies 

Jeneen Frei Njootli is a Vuntut Gwitchin artist who has performed and exhibited her work internationally, from galleries to rooftops, casinos, runways and the bush. She works across numerous media and modes, including performance, sound, installation, fashion, and with community, and is a co-creator of the ReMatriate Collective. Frei Njootli holds a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art and Design (2012) and an MFA from the University of British Columbia (2017). In 2016 she was one of three recipients of the William & Meredith Saunderson Prize for Emerging Canadian Artists from the Hnatyshyn Foundation. She was longlisted for the Sobey Art Award in 2017 and shortlisted for the same in 2018. Her work has been the focus of solo exhibitions across Canada and in New York. She has participated in the 2018 Biennale d’art contemporain autochtone (BACA) / Contemporary Native Art Biennial, and in group exhibitions in Vancouver, Toronto, Seoul, Whitehorse, North Bay, Brandon, Saskatoon, and elsewhere. Frei Njootli has collaborated in performances with James Luna, Olivia Whetung, Tsēma igharas, Krista Belle Stewart with Laura Ortman, Lyndsay Lachance, and Dana Claxton. She is currently a grateful, uninvited guest on unceded Tsleil-Waututh, Musqueam and Squamish territories.

Olivia Whetung is anishinaabekwe and a member of Curve Lake First Nation. She completed her BFA with a minor in anishinaabemowin at Algoma University in 2013, and her MFA at the University of British Columbia in 2016. Whetung works in various media including beadwork, printmaking and digital media. Her work explores acts of/active native presence, as well as the challenges of working with/in/through Indigenous languages in an art world dominated by the English language. Her work is informed in part by her experiences as an anishinaabemowin learner. Whetung is from the area now called the Kawarthas, and presently resides on Chemong Lake.

Ayumi Goto is a performance apprentice currently based in Toronto, traditional territories of the Anishnawbe, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, and Petun First Nations, the Seneca, and Mississaugas of the Credit River. Born in Canada, she draws upon her Japanese heritage and language to unsettle sedimented notions of nation-building, cultural belonging and political compulsions in her creative work. She has served as the art facilitator at the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre in Vancouver, traditional Coast Salish territory. She enjoys performing in collaboration with artists, scholars and communities writ large to explore creatively and critically reconciliation discourses and relational ethics. Most recently, she has performed public interventions in Berlin, London and Kyoto, as well as focusing on developing human-nonhuman interconnections through performances in rural and forested areas. Ayumi is currently completing her PhD in Communication Studies at Simon Fraser University. In her thesis, she explores a performatively premised conceptualization of “collective responsibility” and relationality as expressed in the practices of Cree Métis artist, Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Siksika artist, Adrian Stimson and Tahltan performance artist, Peter Morin.

Peter Morin is a performance artist, curator and writer from the Tahltan Nation.  In his artistic practice, along with his curatorial work, Morin investigates the impact sites that occur when Indigenous cultural-based practices and western settler colonialism collide. In 2016, Morin received the Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Award for Mid-Career Artist.  Morin has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions including *Team Diversity Bannock, the World’s Largest Bannock attempt* (2005); *12 Making Objects AKA First Nations DADA (12 Indigenous Interventions)* (2009); *Peter Morin’s Museum* (2011); and Peter Morin’s *Ceremony Experiments 1 through 8 Circle* (2013). In addition to his art making and performance practice, Morin has curated exhibitions at the Museum of Anthropology, Western Front, Bill Reid Gallery, and Yukon Art Centre. Morin joined the Visual and Aboriginal Arts Faculty at Brandon University in 2014. 


A detail image of Jeneen Frei Njootli's installation work. It is a large-scale sheet of steel with some oil marks that look like a geographic map.

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Jeneen Frei Njootli, Ayumi Goto, Peter Morin, and Olivia Whetung: Resonant Presence and Refusals

Beads have long held a significant place in the practice of Mississauga-Nishinaabe artist Olivia Whetung. Her work considers how knowledge is held and transferred through water, land and community, and enacts, in her words, “active native presence.” In *Sugarbush Shrapnel*, Whetung considers her own connections to the ecosystem of her home on Chemong Lake, Ontario, in an era of accelerating climate change and environmental destruction. What will be lost through climate change? How might we remember ecosystems after we have forever altered them? These questions are considered in *Stand* (2019), a new suite of large-scale works comprised of thin panels of wood veneer, bead-embroidered with wood-burned lines upon their surfaces. Through the delicate renderings, Whetung traces fragile relationships between plants, animals and humans. Resembling half-remembered scenes pulled from the fog of memory, Whetung’s images offer the barest edges of an ecosystem in the process of irrevocable change. 

Curated by Kimberly Phillips with assistance from Julia Lamare

*Sugarbush Shrapnel* is generously supported by the Audain Foundation.

### Biography
Olivia Whetung is a member of Curve Lake First Nation and a citizen of the Nishnaabeg Nation. Her work has been the focus of solo exhibitions at Gallery 44, Toronto (2018); Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art, Kelowna (2018); Artspace, Peterborough (2017); and 180 Projects, Sault Ste. Marie. She has contributed to two-person and group exhibitions at Queen’s University, Kingston (2019); Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas (2018-19); Textile Museum of Canada, Toronto (2018); Art Gallery of Mississauga (2018); Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa (2017); Access Gallery, Vancouver (2016); Western Front, Vancouver (2016); Axe Neo 7, Gatineau; VIVO Media Arts Centre, Vancouver (2016); Open Space, Victoria (2014); and many others. She completed her BFA with a minor in Anishinaabemowin at Algoma University (2013) and her MFA in Visual Art at the University of British Columbia (2016). She was awarded the John Hartman Award in 2018, the William and Meredith Saunderson Prize for Emerging Artists in 2016, and is a recipient of a CGS-M Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Award and an Aboriginal Graduate Fellowship. In 2019 she was awarded a Joseph S. Stauffer Prize by the Canada Council for the Arts.



ProgramGuideFall2019.pdf

ExhibitionGuideOliviaWhetung.pdf

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Five ultra-thin panels of maple, birch and cherry wood veneer stretch vertically from a gallery floor to ceiling. There are bead-embroidered and etched lines on the surface of the wood.

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An image detail of a panel of wood veneer stretched vertically from the gallery floor to ceiling. Bead-embroidered and etched floral renderings are woven and burned onto the surface of the wood.

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Installation shot of five panels of veneer stretched vertically from the gallery floor to ceiling. A green vitrine sits in the background, placed in front of a large corner window.

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Five small, beaded pods sit in a line on a light green plinth. The beaded pods come in various shapes, colours and patterns. 

Olivia Whetung

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