By Nigel Maxwell

New gallery exhibit blends past with present

Sep 14, 2018 | 5:50 PM

The artist responsible for a new exhibit at the Mann Art gallery said her goal was to show the empowerment, innovation and resiliency of Indigenous women.

Catherine Blackburn, who grew up in Choiceland, spent the past two years preparing the New Age Warriors exhibit. She said Indigenous women have typically in the past been stereotyped as only life givers and language keepers.

“A lot of those stereotypes are narratives that have formed from non-Indigenous voices and so for this exhibition I wanted there to really be a sense of reclamation in telling those truths and telling our stories, and telling those stories as contemporary Indigenous people,” she said.

The exhibit, which includes photography, head dresses, and garments, opened Friday night and has been scheduled to run until Oct. 25. Blackburn said there is a special reason she chose to use plastic in the garments.

“There’s a fusing in this exhibition that takes the unconventional with more traditional materials and aims to fuse that together to kind of speak to the space that I want to represent, the here and the now and the contemporary,” she said.

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Blackburn said she was thrilled to see her exhibit open in the city where she started her career as an artist six years ago at the winter festival. Prior to this weekend, Blackburn’s garments were also debuted during the Toronto Indigenous Fashion Week.

“They made their debut down the runway and it was really wonderful to see them on moving bodies and see them in action,” she said.

Blackburn added none of this exhibit would be possible without the collaboration of her partners which includes Tenille Campbell of Sweetmoon Photography, Melanie Parsons, Alana Edzerza, Liss Stender, Tessa Sayers, Razvan Anton, Melanie Leblanc, Kacey Beaudry, Natashia Gagnon, Emma Anderson, and Red Works photography.

Over the next two years the exhibit will travel to different corners of the province, with stops in North Battleford, Moose Jaw and Swift Current.

“It’s super exciting and I’m ready to celebrate it,” she said.

nigel.maxwell@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @nigelmaxwell