Robert Houle: The Sandy Bay Residential School Series
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School of Art Gallery 180 Dafoe Road, 255 ARTlab, University of Manitoba, Fort Garry Campus,, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3T 2N2
Robert Houle, "The Sandy Bay residential School Series," nd
oilstick, pencil, paper
Robert Houle: The Sandy Bay Residential School Series
Robert Houle’s Sandy Bay Residential School Series is comprised of twenty-four drawings drawn over consecutive days. The work was triggered, in part, by a nightmare about an incident that the artist had repressed. The dream of elementary school abuse occurred after Houle returned to Sandy Bay for a funeral and shortly after the Government of Canada’s Official Statement of Apology to residential school survivors. Loose sketches rendered in oilstick depict the school playground, dormitory beds, and religious figures as remembered, fragmentary and haunting. Handwritten Saulteaux texts, inscribed in pencil, capture thoughts that resurfaced as the artist worked on these drawings. Forbidden from speaking his maternal language as a child, thinking and writing in Saulteaux was a part of Houle’s process of healing by letting go of conflict in his mind—a traditional counterpoint to concepts of reconciliation and forgiveness.
Robert Houle is a contemporary Anishinaabe Saulteaux artist, curator, and writer. A member of Sandy Bay First Nation, Manitoba, Houle lives in Toronto. He received a BA in Art History from the University of Manitoba, a BA in Art Education from McGill University, and studied at the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts in Salzburg, Austria. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Founder’s Achievement Award from the Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts (2020), two honourary doctorates, the 2015 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts, the Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship (2003), the Toronto Arts Award (2001) and the Janet Braide Memorial Award for Excellence in Canadian Art History (1993).