Rebecca Belmore, “ishkode (fire),” 2021
foreground, installation view of "Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as It’s Kept" at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (photo by Aruna D'Souza)
ARTnews magazine has named two Canadian works – one by Anishinaabe artist Rebecca Belmore and the other by Camille Turner, a doctoral candidate at York University in Greater Toronto – to its list of 25 "defining artworks" of 2022.
The works, chosen by the American magazine's editors, include, in the No. 22 spot, Belmore's ishkode (fire), which is described as "one of the most talked about pieces" at the Whitney Biennial in New York.
It shows a haunting figure wrapped in a sleeping bag encircled by hundreds of bullets.
"Belmore is drawing attention to the continued violence that Indigenous people face today in these supposedly 'post-colonial' times," writes Shanti Escalante-De Mattei.
Camille Turner, "Nave," 2022
installation view at Small Arms Inspection Building, Toronto Biennial of Art 2022 (photo by Toni Halkenscheid; commissioned by the Toronto Biennial of Art)
In the No. 21 spot is Turner's Nave, a work exhibited at the Toronto Biennial of Art that built on her research into Canada's entanglement with the transatlantic slave trade. Turner received the biennial's 2022 Artist Prize, which recognizes an outstanding contribution to the biennial.
Nave, a three-channel video, envisions the journey of at least 19 ships built in Newfoundland that ultimately went to Africa to carry enslaved people back across the Atlantic. The ships were loaded with ballast – rocks from Newfoundland – that were left in Africa.
"It's a moving, poetic, and ultimately haunting film that forces viewers to reckon with this past and how so many histories like this remain to be uncovered," writes Maximilíano Durón.
The list's top spot went to Simone Leigh, the first Black woman to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale. Her installation in Venice, Sovereignty, transformed the U.S. pavilion, covering its exterior under a thatched roof with wooden supports.
"Inside the pavilion, deceptively simple sculptures celebrated traditional African forms while calling out colonialist tropes," writes Stephanie Cash.
ARTnews declared 2022 as the year "art roared back" with the return of major international art festivals, including the Venice Biennale and Documenta, as well as a year that saw artists continuing to explore how racism, colonialism and misogyny shape society, offering "powerful views into alternate universes devoid of these poisonous prejudices."