Curve! Women Carvers on the Northwest Coast

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Cherish Alexander, “Mountain Lion,” c.2011, alder, pigment, 18" x 20" x 6.3" (photo by Kenji Nagai, collection of Tony Allard, courtesy of Audain Art Museum)

It is both hard to believe, yet unsurprising, that at the close of 2024 there remains massive historical and curatorial gaps in the inclusion of women artists, especially Indigenous women artists. We are, as a society, comfortable allowing men to be at the forefront of most canons. Naturally, there is much to discover in the long shadow cast by history’s “great white men” and the few BIPOC men who have made it into the “allowable inclusions.” 

Curve! Women Carvers on the Northwest Coast, at the Audain Art Museum (AAM) in Whistler until May 5, 2025, challenges this canonical impulse, showcasing 125 contributions from Indigenous women working in the tradition of wood carving along the Northwest Coast of Canada. Co-curated by renowned artist and 2023 Audain Prize Winner Dana Claxton and AAM Director and Chief Curator Curtis Collins, the exhibition brings together sculptures, masks, panels, and vessels for daily use, drawn from the oeuvres of fourteen women carvers. 

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Freda Diesing, “Old Woman with Labret,” 1973, alder, cedarbark, hair, abalone shell, paint, 8" x 9" x 6" (photo by Kenji Nagai, courtesy of Audain Art Museum)

Artworks and objects date from the early 1950s to present and highlight the role of women within the tradition as both artist practitioners and pragmatists (if you need something, you make it). Ellen Neel (1916 to 1966), Freda Diesing (1925 to 2002), and Doreen Jensen (1933 to 2009), three master carvers who exhibit posthumously, round out an impressive range of artists at the top of their careers and those with emerging practices: Susan Point, Dale Marie Campbell, Marianne Nicolson, Marika Echachis Swan, Morgan Asoyuf, Cori Savard, Stephanie Anderson, Veronica Waechter, Arlene Ness, Cherish Alexander, and Melanie Russ. 

Neel’s series of Kwakiutl Tsonoqua Masks, or “wind masks,” made over the span of her career, are friendly reoccurring figures that gesture back to Kwakwaka’wakw  tradition and some of the familiar faces sculpted by the late and great master carver Beau Dick. The Tsonoqua is a supernatural woman of the woods, fearsome to children who she feeds on, but known to bring herself back from the dead and regenerate her own wounded body. Lips open and rounded, as if to blow a strong wind, the Tsonoqua mask most often appears to signal the end of a ceremony, but here, positioned throughout the exhibition, seem to celebrate the ongoing efforts of the artists and the resilience of the tradition.

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Ellen Neel, “Totemland,” c. 1965, wood, pigment, 22.5" x 13.5" x 6" (photo by Kenji Nagai, courtesy of Audain Art Museum)

Neel’s featured carvings were often made out of necessity, as items to sell to tourists. Some of these smaller features and totems were signed by the artist but are potentially the handiwork of her once-small children who were all involved in her practice, a kind of family business. 

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Cori Savard, “Xiilang (Thunderbird),” 2021, yellow cedar, pigment, 36" x 36" x 2" (photo by Kenji Nagai, courtesy of Audain Art Museum)

Contemporary offerings from Gitxsan carver Veronica Waechter deal in exuberant colour and make use of unexpected materials such as denim and found marking tape. A long mane of recycled orange and yellow taping cascades down the back body of Legends of the Blue Sky from 2019, contrasting colour, material, and temporality with the mask itself.  Waechter is a student of the Tahltan Tlinget artist Dempsey Bob and trained at the Freda Deising School of Northwest Coast Art, well complemented by Deising’s own work that anchors this show. 

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Veronica Waechter, “Reflections,” 2019, alder wood, red cedar bark, hand cut abalone shell, acrylic paint, 12" x 9" x 4.5" (photo by Kenji Nagai, courtesy of Audain Art Museum)

Curve! is breath of fresh air. A much need interruption to business as usual, the exhibition gently shakes its visitors from the lazy stupor of art history, expanding public knowledge to include these key women carvers, and embracing both joy and practicality as the spirit of invention. ■

Curve! Women Carvers on the Northwest Coast is at the Audain Art Museum (AAM) in Whistler until May 5, 2025

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