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Art Contemporary (1945-)

Tawâskweyâw ᑕᐋᐧᐢᑫᐧᔮᐤ

A Path or Gap Among the Trees A Touring Survey of Artworks by Jason Baerg

text by Gerald McMaster & Ryan Rice

edited by Stephen Foster

Publisher
Jason Baerg
Initial publish date
Jan 2021
Category
Contemporary (1945-), Native American
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9781989010105
    Publish Date
    Jan 2021
    List Price
    $35

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Description

Featuring texts by Marcus Miller, Stephen Foster, Ryan Rice, and Dr. Gerald McMaster, this publication catalogues Tawâskweyâw ᑕᐋᐧᐢᑫᐧᔮᐤ / A Path or Gap Among the Trees, a touring survey exhibition of works by Jason Baerg.

During the past twenty-five years, Baerg’s work has investigated community, ritual, urban migration, Cree cosmology, native relationality, survivance, an indigenized anthropocene, language revitalization, and Indigenous futurisms. Between interactive immersive generative media projection pieces and laser cut painting installations, Baerg’s approach to drawing and painting, has, as Stephen Foster writes in the publication’s Introduction, “important and significant political positioning as it seeks to transform an art system and generate space for a new generation of contemporary Indigenous artists”.

About the authors

Gerald McMaster, PhD, is the Fredrik S. Eaton Curator of Canadian Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario. During his tenure as Curator of Contemporary Indian Art at the Canadian Museum of Civilization (1981-2000), he established the first Indian and Inuit gallery at the CMC. In 1992, he curated Indigena for the Canadian Museum of Man and co-authored the book Indigena: Contemporary Native Perspectives in Canadian Art. His publications include Reservation X (1998), Native Universe (2004) and Remix: New Modernities in a Post-Indian World (2007). In 1995, he served as Canadian Commissioner and curated Edward Poitras's exhibition at the Venice Biennale. From 2000 to 2004, he was Deputy Assistant Director for Cultural Resources at the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution. At NMAI, he curated First American Art (2004) and New Tribe / New York (2005). He was awarded the Order of Canada (2007) and the National Aboriginal Achievement Award in 2005.

Gerald McMaster's profile page

Stephen Foster's profile page

Ryan Rice has worked at various museums and galleries, including the Iroquois Indian Museum and the Walter Phillips Art Gallery. His articles have been published in such periodicals as Canadian Art and Blackflash. Rice is a co-founder and former director of the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective. He is chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Ryan Rice's profile page

Excerpt: Tawâskweyâw ᑕᐋᐧᐢᑫᐧᔮᐤ: A Path or Gap Among the Trees A Touring Survey of Artworks by Jason Baerg (text by Gerald McMaster & Ryan Rice; edited by Stephen Foster)

In this introduction I want to highlight some of the themes present in Baerg’s work while connecting them to the essays of Ryan Rice and Gerald McMaster. Both essays assert some important observations that reflect the changing context of Indigenous contemporary art as seen by a cultural industry, which has only recently started to evolve beyond an entrenched art historical tradition. A tradition that is self-referential and culturally myopic. Rice and McMaster reveal a context where interpretation must follow from an Indigenous perspective and incorporate an Indigenous art tradition separate from a European tradition. In this light Baerg’s work has important and significant political positioning as it seeks to transform an art system and generate space for a new generation of contemporary Indigenous artists.