When Raven Became Spider

×

Expand

Shaun Beyale, The Time Traveler, 2015

ink, marker and jellyroll pen on paper. Courtesy of Dunlop Art Gallery.

Tuesday, February 4, 2020, 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm musician Curtis Running Rabbit-Lefthand comes to Open Space to perform a new improvisational work in response to the gallery exhibition When Raven Became Spider.

Curtis Running Rabbit-Lefthand is an Indigenous multimedia creative producer, musician, spoken word artist, and scholar. He is the founder and Executive Artistic Director of Indigenous Resilience in Music - an Indigenous-led organization creating insight into the lives of Indigenous musicians and empowering Indigenous youth in reclaiming their identity in music and the arts. As an artist and musician, he performs as the front person for the aggressive hardcore punk band Signatory and performs under his solo singer songwriter works outside of his band. Curtis is a proud member of the Blackfoot Confederacy and comes from the Amskaapipikuni, Siksika and Stoney Nakoda nations.

Admission is free/by donation. Doors open at 7:00.

Join us Saturday, February 8, from 2-4pm to celebrate the closing of When Raven Became Spider with a talk by Sonny Assu!

The show, When Raven Became Spider, comprises work from six Indigenous artists who transpose supernatural beings from Indigenous stories into the realm of superhero comics.

Curator Leena Minifie (Gitxaala, Ts’msyen) writes, “Collectively, across Nations, supernatural beings exist in everyday life. Supernatural existence is an extension of—and an essential element of—every traditional story, a force that weaves through narratives across the continents in all Indigenous cultures.”

This interest in representing culturally-specific supernatural figures through the language of comics is one that binds all the artists featured in the show: Joi T. Arcand (Cree), Sonny Assu (Kwakwaka’wakw), Shaun Beyale (Navajo), Julianne Beaudin-Herney (Cree/Mi’kmaq/Métis), Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers (Blackfoot/Sami), and Jeffery Veregge (S’Klallam) have all contributed work to When Raven Became Spider that, in its fusion of Indigenous art-making and storytelling practices and pop culture, opens up the intersection between oral and visual cultures.

In taking on the guise of this pop cultural form, the figures depicted demonstrate the unending adaptability of Indigenous stories—as Leena Minifie writes: “Transformation resonates as an Indigenous power of survival in genocidal times.”

When Raven Became Spider was first shown at the Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina Public Library, and makes its way to Victoria after a critically-acclaimed nation-wide tour. The Open Space iteration of the show will feature new works by island-based artist Sonny Assu.