Lauren Crazybull: TSIMA KOHTOTSITAPIIHPA

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Lauren Crazybull, "TSIMA KOHTOTSITAPIIHPA Where are you from?," 2019-2020

Lauren Crazybull | TSIMA KOHTOTSITAPIIHPA

Curated by Noor Bhangu as part of even the birds are walking

Opening Reception | Friday, January 24 from 7-10pm

Lauren Crazybull’s solo exhibition in the Garage, TSIMA KOHTOTSITAPIIHPA Where are you from? represents the culmination of her research and work as the 2019 Alberta Artist-in-Residence. Over the past year, Crazybull has travelled across the province, documenting her experiences as she visited sites of Indigenous history and community. Crazybull has assembled the extent of her research into a new project, which explores painting, mapmaking, sound and bookmaking. Crazybull’s exhibition is part of Noor Bhangu’s curatorial project even the birds are walking, which centres artists that stretch inherited social visions by accommodating cross-cultural, cross-temporal, and interspecial encounters.

TSIMA KOHTOTSITAPIIHPA Where are you from?, is a reflection on distance, repatriation and history. The project takes the form of a multi-work installation, plotting out and elevating key personal histories from Treaty 6, 7 and 8 territories, on the map of what we presently call Alberta. As the centrepiece of the exhibition, the painted map becomes a mural of stories, illustrating the diverse history of the land and the resilience of the Indigenous people who reside here. Language plays a major role and Crazybull traces the importance of memory and place through her deliberate use of primarily Blackfoot terminology. Moreover, Crazybull carefully intertwines aspects from her own experience into the larger narrative of Indigenous existence in Alberta, pondering the generational effects of social care systems and residential schools on Indigenous children. Alongside the painted map of Alberta, the exhibition will feature a 20 minute, 4 track audio piece comprised of audio recordings made by Crazybull during her travels. This audio work will also feature a score by musician Matthew Cardinal. Finally, the exhibition will showcase a book cataloging Crazybull’s time as Alberta’s first Artist-in-Residence. In the context of Noor Bhangu’s curatorial project even the birds are walking, TSIMA KOHTOTSITAPIIHPA Where are you from? is a recalling and reclaiming of history in an effort to imagine brighter pathways toward the future.

Lauren Crazybull is an Edmonton based Blackfoot, Dene visual artist. Lauren's most recent work has looked to explore the tension and power within portraiture by examining the subtle relationship between herself and the subjects she paints. By centring the gaze, beauty and rich humanity of fellow Indigenous people in her recent work, Lauren means to ask poignant questions about how Indigenous identities can be represented, experienced, celebrated and understood through the particular gaze that artistry casts and requires. In 2019, Lauren was appointed as Alberta’s first Artist in Residence. In 2018, she was awarded the McLuhan house year long studio residency. Before fully immersing into the visual art world, Lauren worked for 4 years in radio and broadcasting focusing on Indigenous issues. Following that, she worked for 2 years as the art coordinator at a centre for at-risk youth.  Through this work, she understands that her creative power is a poignant way to assert her own humanity, and advocate, in diverse and subtle ways, for the innate intellectual, spiritual, creative and political fortitude of Indigenous people.