TSIMA KOHTOTSITAPIIHPA WHERE ARE YOU FROM? | LAUREN CRAZYBULL
Lauren Crazybull, a Niitsitapi and Dené painter currently residing in Edmonton, returned to Kainai territory to research the land and language of their family as a part of their artistic research as 2019 Alberta Artist-in-Residence. In this region, Crazybull met with artists and elders, and connected with landmarks and historical sites of the Blackfoot Confederacy. Through this process, Crazybull has created their own map based on personal exploration of the lands across the province, and how this journey has informed their own practice in becoming an artist.
TSIMA KOHTOTSITAPIIHPA Where are you from? includes the hand-painted map of Indigenous territories now known as Treaty 6, 7, and 8 territories of Alberta, traversed by Lauren Crazybull. The photographic documentation of this journey culminated in a book created by the artist, and an audio soundscape by Crazybull, featuring a score by musician Matthew Cardinal.
TSIMA KOHTOTSITAPIIHPA Where are you from? was premiered at Latitude 53 Gallery in an exhibition curated by Noor Bhangu. The Southern Alberta Art Gallery iteration of the exhibition includes several new works created by the artist, reflecting on their connections to the Blackfoot territory. In conjunction with this exhibition, Crazybull presents Granny Dora, an Into the Streets public artwork on the east window of the SAAG. The closing celebration includes a screening of a short documentary IIKAAKIIMAAT, by filmmaker Conor McNally. This film screening is presented in partnership with the Reconciliation Lethbridge Committee and the City of Lethbridge.
When I think about repatriation, I think about going into a museum and taking back items. I learned from Martin HeavyHead Sr. that repatriation takes many forms, including learning stories, making relations and visiting the places where our ancestors spent time. We can take back these things that were once stolen from us. Sometime this year I decided that the money I received from the Alberta Government would be the money I used to reclaim what I lost during my sixteen years in the child welfare system. To do this I would create a large-scale map of Alberta that focused on Indigenous relationship to land. I would do this through looking for original place names, researching and traveling around Alberta. Halfway through the residency, when I realized that I'm not a cartographer, I decided I would narrow the scope and include myself and my family's relationship to the land in this province. I ended up spending most of my time in Southern Alberta where my mom's side of the family is from. “TSIMA KOHTOTSITAPIIHPA: Where are you from?” has been a way for me to explore the complexity of home and belonging.
—Lauren Crazybull
SAAG Art Library Project | Beginning in 2020, the SAAG will present exhibitions as in-situ interventions within our art library. The Art Library Project will feature a diverse selection of artworks and mediums from regional contemporary artists. Artists are invited to think of the library as a unique exhibition context by investigating the SAAG’s programming around readership, publications, and its place within Lethbridge’s historic Carnegie library, which opened in 1922. Artists are encouraged to consider the physical architecture of the library and its material holdings, responding to a broader and generative idea of what a library might be, as they change and adapt to new forms of knowledge production.
Lauren Crazybull is an Edmonton based Blackfoot, Dene visual artist. Lauren’s most recent work has looked to explore the tension and power within portraiture by examining the subtle relationship between themself and the subjects they paint. By centring the gaze, beauty and rich humanity of fellow Indigenous people in their recent work, Crazybull means to ask poignant questions about how Indigenous identities can be represented, experienced, celebrated and understood through the particular gaze that artistry casts and requires. In 2019, Lauren Crazybull was appointed as Alberta’s first Artist in Residence. In 2018, they were awarded the McLuhan House year-long studio residency. Before fully immersing into the visual art world, Crazybull worked for four years in radio and broadcasting focusing on Indigenous issues. Following that, they worked for two years as the art coordinator at a centre for at-risk youth. Through this work, Crazybull understands that their creative power is a poignant way to assert their own humanity, and advocate, in diverse and subtle ways, for the innate intellectual, spiritual, creative and political fortitude of Indigenous people.
Lauren Crazybull, Estipahskikikinikots, digital c-print, 2020. Courtesy of the artist.
INTO THE STREETS PUBLIC ART SERIES: GRANNY DORA | LAUREN CRAZYBULL
As an Into the Streets public art project in conjunction with the exhibition TSIMA KOHTOTSITAPIIHPA WHERE ARE YOU FROM? Lauren Crazybull’s mural Granny Dora is presented in the east-facing window of the SAAG. As Alberta’s 2019 Artist in Residence, Crazybull used their funding from the provincial government to reclaim the familial and geographic knowledge lost to them in the child welfare system. As part of this project, they travelled to Fort Mackay to meet with their grandmother for the first time in over a decade. There, Crazybull began to reclaim their relationships to land, language, and kin and later immortalized the meeting in a painted portrait of her grandmother which would be used as a source for her vinyl mural.
Granny Dora is painted in the moment where the artist’s grandmother looks to the artist, describing the history of Fort Chipewyan and their distant, shared origins. Crazybull’s caring rendition of Granny Dora and the work’s presentation as a public-facing artwork restores authority to the portrait’s subject, especially the Indigenous one. The turning pose and direct gaze of the subject as well as the work’s larger-than-life scale maintains Granny Dora as an active individual that cannot be reduced to an object to be owned or kept in a museum.
Curated by Adam Whitford, Curatorial and Publications Coordinator
Lauren Crazybull is an Edmonton based Blackfoot, Dene visual artist. Lauren’s most recent work has looked to explore the tension and power within portraiture by examining the subtle relationship between themself and the subjects they paint. By centring the gaze, beauty and rich humanity of fellow Indigenous people in their recent work, Crazybull means to ask poignant questions about how Indigenous identities can be represented, experienced, celebrated and understood through the particular gaze that artistry casts and requires. In 2019, Lauren Crazybull was appointed as Alberta’s first Artist in Residence. In 2018, they were awarded the McLuhan House year-long studio residency. Before fully immersing into the visual art world, Crazybull worked for four years in radio and broadcasting focusing on Indigenous issues. Following that, they worked for two years as the art coordinator at a centre for at-risk youth. Through this work, Crazybull understands that their creative power is a poignant way to assert their own humanity, and advocate, in diverse and subtle ways, for the innate intellectual, spiritual, creative and political fortitude of Indigenous people.
Image Credit | Lauren Crazybull, Granny Dora, photographic mural on perforated vinyl, 2020. Image courtesy the artist.