'At home here in Regina': New exhibition captures 56 years of Indigenous art, self-determination

Little glass seed beads adorn a menstrual cup, carefully capturing the moon cycle phases around its sides.
The beadwork, a traditional art practice for Regina-based Métis artist Audie Murray, is transposed onto an unconventional object to talk about contemporary experiences of the world.
Titled Moon Cup, it is one of the featured pieces in the MacKenzie Art Gallery's (MAG) newest exhibition showing how Indigenous art and performance has been used to challenge colonial oppression.
'It's really hard to separate politics and indigeneity and that is not because of Indigenous people but the way that the government and others see Indigenous people,' said Murray in a recent interview. 'We are political, our lives are just intrinsically related to politics and rules and laws that the government imposes on us.'
'So for art to be a way of reacting to these different political climates, it's just a natural thing,' she said.
Murray, like the other featured artists in the gallery, use humour as a layer in their work. Another of her pieces, Protection (2020), is a beadwork condom still in its wrapper. The needle and thread punctured through, rendering the object unusable for its intended protective use.
Her third artwork Celestial Gloves (2021) is a pair of worn work gloves with porcupine quills, which Murray says shows the 'physical traces of labour or hard work that we have to do as Indigenous people.'
Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self-Determination since 1969 is showing in Regina at a time when public dialogue about western separatism and expediting natural resource projects is facing pushback from First Nations who want to see inherent and treaty rights upheld by provincial and federal governments.
The exhibition traces through 56 years of the Self-Determination Era through performance and artwork. It emerged from the 19-month Occupation of Alcatraz, where activists asserted they had treaty rights to the federally abandoned island outside of San Francisco.
Even Saskatchewan-based artists such as Bob Boyer and Ruth Cuthand played a role in that art movement, says MAG's executive director.
'I feel really good … when we're bringing outside curated shows that can help us understand ourselves here more and this, I think, really is exemplary of that,' said John G. Hampton during a walk through the gallery rooms.
The MacKenzie lent work from Murray, Boyer and Cuthand for the 2023 debut of Indian Theater at the Hessel Museum in New York state. But Hampton, who made history in 2021 as the first Indigenous director of a major non-Indigenous art institution in Canada, says 'it's just so at home here in Regina.'
The exhibition is one of the largest the MAG has had for some time. More than 100 pieces of work are spread across almost all of the second floor gallery space and down to the main floor theatre.
Hampton hopes the show inspires people with its 'breadth and scale and the sophistication of work that's been produced since 1969.'
The exhibition's curator, Candice Hopkins, is from Carcross/Tagish First Nation in Yukon, but is based in New York. She says she relies on her relations in the art world to bring together pieces that are 'in dialogue with one another.'
'I want it to feel not just lively but alive,' said Hopkins, who was in Regina for opening night on May 22.
'You should not only feel like you're part of it, but you should feel like all of these (artworks) have agency in and of themselves. And so I really feel that at the MacKenzie.'
Indian Theatre will be at the MAG until September 21.
The gallery space will have a live performance on the evening of Thursday, June 12 with Nicholas Galanin's piece White Carver activated by local woodcarver Chad Arie.
nyking@postmedia.com
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