Elemental Transformations

I had the privilege of co-curating Elemental Transformations with Heather LeDuc at Arts Underground as well as the Chu Niikwän Artist Residency

November 5 - 27, 2021

(Residency from June-November)

The 2021 Chu Niikwän Artist Residency exhibition, Elemental Transformations, draws its name from the materials and concepts used by the participating artists – Rebecca Manias, Kim Roberts and Sheelah Tolton. Their practices represent a diverse range of interests. Both in the themes they explore and the media they use, each artist transforms the elements into their own distinct vision.

A highlight of the 2021 residency was the artists’ participation in Wondercrawl, an outdoor event hosted by Something Shows on September 10. While the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting our ability to present the visual arts, Wondercrawl was an opportunity for artists to meaningfully connect with festival-goers.

For Kim Roberts, there is magic in glass and the way it captures the light. As a stained-glass and mosaic artist, Roberts makes luminous tableaus of the world she sees around her – wildlife, landscapes, and small northern towns. She is sometimes inspired by the beadwork design of her Métis heritage. She uses inlays to create silhouettes of animals and people that animate the glass backgrounds. Other times her interest is in the inherent beauty of the elements, such as agate, and the results are more abstract pieces. As the residency’s Indigenous artist, Roberts worked in a Culture Cabin at the Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre. At Wondercrawl, Roberts hung her pieces above the cultural centre’s fire-pit where the glassworks were illuminated among the trees on the river’s edge. Even the small pieces – feathers of all colours dangling from a post – transformed the space into something magical.

As the emerging artist for the residency, Sheelah Tolton was based in Arts Underground. Tolton works with clay to make earthen birdhouses based on human home designs. A brick birdhouse is made out of hundreds of tiny bricks that Tolton fashioned from the clay. A small condo and a home with corrugated siding reflect modern trends in housing. A lunar house predicts the housing of the future. The miniature dwellings are remarkably life-like replicas of the places people live in. This is the irony of Tolton’s work – the idea that we make houses for birds in response to our own fantasies of the perfect home. As appealing as the birdhouses are aesthetically, conceptually they speak to issues of affordable housing and the seemingly impossible dream of having a home to call one’s own. Even the birds don’t come out as winners, as their natural habitat is sacrificed for these artificial dwellings whose designs goes unappreciated by the avian inhabitants.

Rebecca Manias worked from the Old Fire Hall, where the Yukon River fed into their explorations of identity and the fluidity of gender. Their original intention was to create a number of realistic paintings subverting traditional notions of masculinity. However, Manias instead moved towards creating three free-standing, abstract self-portraits rendered in wool and polyurethane foam and acrylic paint, which were installed for Wondercrawl. They also made a series of similarly-styled portraits, which are wall-hangings. The portraits are titled with what we associate as women’s or men’s names – Chelsea, Katie, Liz – but the pieces themselves defy any specific gender. Manias provides sketches to show their process in developing each individual’s portrait. The finished portraits refuse to allow the subjects to be judged according to social norms or standards of beauty. Manias’ portraits suggest that our usual ways of assessing people fails to understand their complex inner natures and gender identities, which are far more fluid and dynamic than outward appearances can convey.

Tsin’įį choh/Thank you to our preparator Neil Graham and to the artists that we had the pleasure of working with over the past several months, Rebecca Manias, Kim Roberts, and Sheelah Tolton.

We’re also grateful to Zach McCann-Armitage and the Wondercrawl crew, Courtney Holmes and Aimée Dawn Robinson from Arts Underground for their incredible support, and to the residency partners – Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre, Arts Underground and Yukon Arts Centre – for providing spaces for the artists to create and present their work.

Curators

Heather LeDuc has worked as an archivist, visual arts curator, and communications analyst. Originally from British Columbia, she has called the Yukon home since 1999. She is grateful to Teresa Vander Meer-Chassé for the invitation to co-curate the 2021 Chu Niikwän residency.

Teresa Vander Meer-Chassé is an Upper Tanana member of the White River First Nation. She’s an independent curator, visual artist, and MFA student at Concordia University. She is thankful to Heather LeDuc for making this experience a wonderful one.

Visit: https://www.artsunderground.ca/residency

All copyrights are retained by the individual artists. All images by Heather LeDuc.