Present Presence for Platforms: Nine Places for Seeing, City of Vancouver. 2023.
At some point it was predicted that Indigenous people were disappearing and would live on only in anthropological representations - ones that quantified and measured us and left us forever in a state of romanticisation. Indigenous complexity was often erased in these portrayals. Temporally we are expected to represent a time that precedes us. My painted portraits have been a way to establish Indigenous presence in a way that places us firmly in the present, to look forward to our futures.
The people embodied within this artwork are Indigenous, belonging to these lands in Vancouver and spanning across to my home, the prairies. Thank you Elijah, Taryn, Xwalacktun, Mom and Jordan for being a part of this work.
