A Conversation about Relationship

Jaime Black and Brandy Bjarnason Bloxom explore intimacy and relationship – with others, with the land and with their ancestors.

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Annie Beach, an artist, and Jennifer Smith, a curator, both live on Treaty One territory and have been working together since October through a mentorship program at Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art. As with most things, the program is online this year, and they have lamented being unable to meet in person and see art together. In February, Winnipeg’s pandemic restrictions eased, allowing galleries to open by appointment, and the pair went to see small gatherings at the Platform Centre for Photographic and Digital Arts. The exhibition of photo-based work came into being as a mentorship between two artists – Jaime Black, who lives on Treaty One territory, and Brandy Bjarnason Bloxom, who lives on Treaty Five territory. The exhibition has closed, but you can still see it on Platform’s website. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Jennifer Smith: This exhibition, small gatherings is about intimacy – intimacy to the land and water, intimacy to each other and intimacy to our ancestors. Jaime Black and Brandy Bjarnason Bloxom respond to each other’s images of both land and waterways. They are taking a collective action to connect and to leave traces, with a clear understanding that this is not just for them. The act of taking photos shows an intent to share these actions with others, allowing viewers into these intimate moments. 

Their mentorship was self-initiated, and they were building a relationship with each other through these acts. They were able to be together in person for a short period, but due to the pandemic and restrictions on travelling to northern Manitoba, where Brandy lives, they did much of this mentorship remotely. This, in turn, meant they created work separately and brought it together for the first time in the exhibition.

Annie Beach: Viewers of small gatherings can sense the intimacy shared between Jaime and Brandy, whether they are looking at the images online, or saw them by appointment at the gallery, where the show was open from Feb. 5 to March 6. Fortuitously, this last year has drastically changed how we view art, as well as who we share it with. It has stripped away the need for large gatherings, forcing viewers to connect up close and personally with the work, either at their own pace online from the comfort of their homes, or by sharing the gallery space with someone they have a close relationship with. 

For Jen and me, it was a nearly overwhelming treat to share space with another physical being and physical artwork, and to weave a sense of tangibility into the shared, yet distant, realities we have created through what we have been giving and receiving over the past year. The intimate ways the works in small gatherings were created are echoed in the intimate ways they are taken in. And the ways the works were created also reflects the nature of relationships – with ourselves, with one another, and with the land and water – through give and take, hope and trust. 

Jennifer Smith: The ways to build intimacies when we are apart physically are not new, but they seem especially poignant at this moment. When we can connect with people near and far with a text message or video chat, physical distance seems to shrink. However, the actions  by Jaime and Brandy are slower and more deliberate – they allow for a deeper form of intimacy. 

Through acts like leaving imprints of their bodies in the snow or on rocks and using their surroundings for photos of themselves – for each other and, eventually, for people in the gallery space – intimacies are grown. They are sharing their personal relationships with the land, relationships that no one would know about if they did not choose to share them.

In that sharing, there is an invitation. I feel the invitation, yet I cannot quite put it into words. Is it an invitation to deepen my intimacy with the land? An invitation to build stronger bonds with Indigenous kin? Is it an invitation to slow down and find more intention in how I engage with the world around me? It’s likely all of these things and more.

Annie Beach: I would say that those are three interchangeable invitations – the relationships we share with the land, with Indigenous kin and within the world – that invite the broader idea of cherishing and being present within the moments we share. 

Through the careful culmination of these moments by Jaime and Brandy, we get a glimpse into shared intimacies that leave nothing but the mere suggestion that they were there. Or, perhaps, the artists leave parts of themselves within these natural landscapes – whether of snow, mud, rock or water – and these intimate moments of relationship become part of the land. 

Although the traces eventually disappear, these moments still remain a part of the story, whether or not we are provided with proof. Similarly, the clay marks on the gallery walls in the installation home body, home land, will be washed off into waterways. Or, perhaps, traces will remain on the wall, and will be painted over, permanently embedding this shared connection.

Jennifer Smith: The majority of this exhibition is about photos as the art – they are what was brought into the gallery and valorized. However, I see the art as the actions taken on the land. The photos are a representation of that. 

When this is connected to the installation, home body, home land, where clay imprints of the body are left on the wall, along with a clay vessel on the floor and medicines placed around the room, the act of bringing land into the gallery space is powerful. It makes bodily connections to the land visible, and also makes me realize that land, and respect for our land, can happen anywhere, even in a clean, white space for exhibitions. It’s a reminder that artists have both the capacity, and the responsibility, to challenge the expectations of a gallery.

Annie and I entered the gallery and understood these connections, and could read the intimacies and see the medicines, and knew that ceremony was present. These traces were left there for us. And when I say us, I mean those who understand the intimacies, who have experienced them firsthand, who look to the land, the waterways, the four-legged and winged relatives and community as a powerful place that holds life, love and comfort. The traces are for everyone who has yearned for connection to their ancestors and found it through the traces they left us on these lands.

Annie Beach: I can’t help but again think back to the idea that building intimacies while physically apart is nothing new, in regard to what our families, down our line of ancestors, endured, whether it was forced removal to boarding and day schools or enforced restrictions on reserves through the pass system. Intimate connections were shared despite these limited moments and movements. 

This work by Jaime and Brandy is a reminder that the distancing we are experiencing now is to protect one another, to survive ulterior or uncontrollable forces, as has always been the case. Through this exhibition’s photography and installation, viewers can feel this gentle nudge toward shared intimate connections that invite a reconsideration of the interconnectedness and responsibilities of all forms of relationship. ■  

small gatherings at the Platform Centre for Photographic and Digital Arts in Winnipeg from Feb. 5 to March 6, 2021.

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Platform: Centre for Photographic & Digital Arts

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