Marianne Nicolson: The Way In Which It Was Given to Us

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Marianne Nicolson "The Way In Which It Was Given to Us," 2017

animation with sound, at UrbanScreen. Photographed by Brian Giebelhaus.

Referencing the pictograph as a way of recording stories on the land, Marianne Nicolson’s newly-created animation for UrbanScreen speaks to the seizure of Indigenous lands.

Nicolson has explored the pictograph in previous works, including in her early large scale mural Cliff Painting (1998) and more recently in her banner project Inquiry to the Newcomers (2017). The originating images for the latter work are based on a real pictograph that exists at the mouth of the Kingcome River in coastal BC, home of the Dzawada̱'enux̱w People, and depicts original contact with trade ships in 1792. Other Nations local to Surrey share histories of contact, reserve commissions, and processes of dispossession. The artist’s UrbanScreen work is informed by this as well as research into Kwantlen and Semiahmoo pictographs. Nicolson’s work celebrates the re-emergence of Indigenous Peoples’ voices while articulating that there can be no true reconciliation between Indigenous and settler societies without an acknowledgement of Indigenous Peoples’ displacement from their lands.

This exhibition was presented as part of New Forms Festival (Sep 28−30) put on by the nonprofit society and media arts organization New Forms Media Society.