Duane Linklater
Photo: Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, avec la permission de/ courtesy of Richard-Max Tremblay
Earth Mother Hair, Indian Hair, and Earth Mother Eyes, Indian Eyes, Animal Eyes, 2017
Paint on interior wall of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, from a series of small paintings of eyes and hair based on a photo of Norval Morrisseau’s Earth Mother and Her Children (1967), painting labour by Julie Ouellet, absence of the artist
From Earth Mother and Her Children, 1967
Paint on wood panel exterior of the Indians of Canada Pavilion, from original drawing, interpretation by Carl Ray, censorship by DIAND, absence of Norval Morrisseau
In this work, Duane Linklater examines the institutionalization and historicization of Indigenous bodies and artworks. His site-specific wall painting references Earth Mother and Her Children, created for the wood panel exterior of the Indians of Canada Pavilion by Norval Morrisseau. It was in fact Carl Ray, Morrisseau’s assistant, who executed the mural on behalf of the artist, for reasons that remain nebulous but may relate to the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND) request that Morriseau alter the work, as they found it too explicit, depicting as it did human and animal representations suckling on the breasts of Mother Earth. In its final rendition, it was altered─censored─and an “appropriate” distance was kept between Mother Earth and her children. Morrisseau’s absence is echoed in Linklater’s own contracting of Julie Ouellet to execute his interpretation of the hair and eyes of the original design. The Indians of Canada Pavilion was particularly charged politically. It consisted of six large-scale works by contemporary artists and a totem pole, as well as photographic and textual documents that explicitly denounced the history and treatment of Native peoples in Canada, including the residential school system, which was in full operation in 1967. Linklater reminds us of these legacies “which we are still experiencing, witnessing and making our way through today.” (D. Linklater)
About the Artist
Duane Linklater, born in 1976, is Omaskêko Cree from Moose Cree First Nation in Northern Ontario and is currently based in North Bay, Ontario. He received his education at the University of Alberta, receiving a Bachelor of Native Studies and a Bachelor of Fine Arts. Linklater attended the Milton Avery Graduate School of Arts at Bard College in upstate New York, completing his Master of Fine Arts in Film and Video. He has exhibited and screened his work nationally and internationally at the Vancouver Art Gallery; the Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton; the Family Business Gallery, New York City; The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto; and in a recent collaboration with Tanya Lukin Linklater at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto. His collaborative film project with Brian Jungen, Modest Livelihood (2012), was originally presented at the Walter Phillips Gallery, at The Banff Centre in collaboration with dOCUMENTA (13), with subsequent exhibitions of this work at the David Logan Centre Gallery at the University of Chicago; at the Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver; and at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Linklater won the Sobey Art Award in 2013.