Meagan Musseau: pi’tawkewaq | our people up river
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Grunt Gallery 116-350 E 2 Ave, Vancouver, British Columbia V5T 4R8
Meagan Musseau, "pi’tawkewaq | our people up river," 2020
grunt gallery presents pi’tawkewaq | our people up river by Meagan Musseau, curated by Laurie White.
Land-based action, video, drawing, sculpture and archival research explore Beothuk and Mi’kmaq land, language, and visual culture in Meagan Musseau’s first solo exhibition in Vancouver. In telling stories about cultural belongings from the perspective of a contemporary L’nu woman living on Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland), Musseau’s work transfers knowledge from archived collections into contemporary visual consciousness.
A braided sculpture made during a land-based action on Musseau’s home region of Elmastukwek (Bay of Islands, NL) forms the physical and conceptual center of the exhibition. While the act of endurance required to create the 22-foot braid connects to stories and nomadic histories of the Mi’kmaq, the object itself carries the history of the land in its creation. A series of tall sculptures rendered in engraved plexiglass reference Beothuk caribou bone pendants and evoke the artist’s experience of visiting cultural belongings through plexiglass cases. Central to the exhibition is an image of Musseau beside one of Santu Toney, a woman living in the early 1900s with mixed Mi’kmaw and Beothuk ancestry. Musseau’s work seeks to honour Santu by highlighting the transmission of knowledge that exists between past, present, and future generations.
pi’tawkewaq | our people up river presents contemporary cultural belongings that index and render tangible Musseau’s active practice of building and maintaining her relationships to land and ancestor artists. She uses her perspective to overturn colonial narratives of disappearance and instead addresses the role of inter-territorial relationships between the two nations as a guiding methodology.
Meagan Musseau is an L’nu artist from the Mi’kmaq Nation. Musseau nourishes an interdisciplinary practice by working with customary art forms and new media, such as basketry, beadwork, land-based performance, video and installation. She focuses on creating artwork, dancing, learning the Mi’kmaw language, and facilitating workshops as a way to actively participate in survivance.
Laurie White is a curator and writer from Sheffield, England. She holds an MA in Critical and Curatorial Studies from the UBC. She has curated exhibitions at the fifty fifty arts collective, Victoria; AHVA Gallery, UBC; and Western Gallery, Bellingham. White co-edited the catalogue Beau Dick: Devoured by Consumerism for Fazakas Gallery and her writing will appear in the forthcoming catalogue, Beginning with the Seventies published by the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery. Laurie is currently the Assistant Curator at the Or Gallery.