Bergman Family Gallery
Duane Linklater: mymothersside features the work of Duane Linklater (b. 1976, Moose Factory, Ontario), whose multimedia practice addresses the contradictions of contemporary Indigenous life within—and beyond—settler systems of knowledge, representation, and value. Opening the institution of “the museum” to Indigenous content, the exhibition brings together sculptures, video works, and digital prints on linen from the past decade of the artist’spractice, as well as new adaptations of installations that he has continually revisited and revised.
With his draped and folded tepee cover paintings, Linklater transforms the semicircular canvas wrapping of the traditional Cree dwelling into a support for digitally printed imagery that he tints with natural dyes. Appearing amid these culturally significant forms and materials, references to the artist’s family, childhood home, and favorite bands, films, and garments suggest an expansive constellation of attributes that defies reductive notions of identity. Linklater counters the ongoing processes of erasure, extraction, and dispossession that impede Indigenous people’s potential with what he calls “a zone of non-interference”—a space of sovereignty and self- determination through art.
This exhibition is organized by Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator Carla Acevedo-Yates.
