Sonny Assu: T´łakwa

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Sonny Assu,"Torment: Issue #5," 2019

acrylic ink, Spider Man comic book pages on Stonehenge paper, 22” x 14”

Opening Saturday, November 30, 2 - 4 pm

SONNY ASSU has been recognized for his mashups of Indigenous iconography with popular culture in a critique of the often, one-dimensional representation of First Nations cultures in mainstream society. While maintaining a profound connection to past traditions, his practice emphasizes the complex conversation relating to the intersections and boundaries of traditional Indigenous art within the larger realm of contemporary art practices. 

This exhibition - T´łakwa (meaning ‘copper’ in Assu’s cultural dialect, Kwak’wala) - takes copper as a starting point to explore societal attributions of status and value, as copper represents wealth in Kwakwaka’wakw culture. Included in this exhibition is a new series of works on paper which incorporate comic book pages through collage. Comic books held their own promise of wealth and value at one time, during what became known as the “speculator boom” of the late 1980s and early 1990s. 

Assu’s work has been featured in several important solo and group exhibits over the past years, notably Don’t Stop Me Now! and Comic Relief at the National Gallery of Canada, Beat Nation and How Soon is Now? at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Changing Hands: Art With Reservation Part 2 at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City and most recently A Radical Mixing at Canada House Gallery in London, UK. His work is represented in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, Seattle Art Museum, Vancouver Art Gallery, Museum of Anthropology at UBC and in various other public and private collections across Canada and the United States.