JULY 2007

Requickening article by NAIC

As a co-curator of THE REQUICKENING PROJECT with Ryan Rice, I was privileged to be a member of an active collaborative effort that enabled the production of truly participatory public art in partnership with the University of Venice's Department of Postcolonial Literature. The dynamic work of performance artist Lori Blondeau (“States of Grace') spoke fluently to the poignant commentary of Shelley Niro's film “Tree.' The presentations were situated outdoors at the public thoroughfare of the Zattere and occurred at dawn and dusk for a five day period. The artists adeptly conveyed the beauty and wisdom of indigenous women's truths, evoking the personal to speak of cultural survival and resistance in a time of social despair and environmental destruction.

This rich cultural exchange extended beyond our five participants (Rice, Mithlo, Niro, Blondeau and Frasca) to encompass participation and dialogue with other artists such as Christy Hengst (Santa Fe, NM), Adrian Stimson (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan) and Mary Anne Barkhouse (Ontario) as well as arts curators Mario Caro (Indiana University-Purdue University), Polly Nordstrand (Denver Art Museum) and Silvina Der-Meguerditchian (Berlin). I was privileged to meet representatives from New Zealand, Latvia, Armenia, Hungary, France, Germany, Iceland and Singapore in encounters characterized as mutual, respective and engaged. Our project was additionally supported by three student interns: Erin Russo (Smith College), Liz Hood (Smith College) and Miles Miller (University of Washington, Seattle).

Being an “arts citizen' of such an expansive environment as the Venice Biennale is simultaneously an empowering a humbling experience; empowering because as a Native arts representative, there was no notion of exclusion at play; humbling because the intelligence, rigor and commitment of the other participants was so deep. I continue to be inspired and supported by the indigenous landscape that is Venice. My understanding of the city is enhanced through collaborations with Mario Di Martino (Studio dal Ponte), Giancarlo and Carla Adorno (Studio Adorno), Amando Pajalich, and Giulio Marra (both of the University of Venice, Department of Postcolonial Literature).
I wish to thank THE REQUICKENING project members – Lori Blondeau, Elisabetta Fraasca, Shelley Niro, and Ryan Rice for their courageous vision, perseverance, creativity and humanity. It is my hope that the number of the indigenous representatives at the Biennale will continue to increase, broadening this important international arts dialogue to engage the unique curatorial visions of aboriginal communities.
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THE REQUICKENING PROJECT
University of Venice, Department of European and Postcolonial Studies
Palazzo Cosulich, Zattere, Dorsoduro 1405
June 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 2007
Featuring Indigenous artists
Shelley Niro and Lori Blondeau

Blog: www.myspace.com/requickeningproject

What is Requickening? Requickening is an aspect of traditional Iroquois condolence ceremonies where human relationships are negotiated and brought back into balance after death or trauma. This cycle of grief and restoration speaks to larger concerns of global warfare and peace, colonial histories, memory, and importantly, healing. The REQUICKENING PROJECT agenda calls upon indigenous knowledge to contribute to the conversation initiated by the Biennale curator Robert Storr. In response to Storr’s curatorial reference “the fragility of culture in violent times,” our statement speaks to indigenous concepts of resilience; acknowledging spirituality, memory and the essence of life.

On the occasion of the 52 La Biennale di Venezia, Lori Blondeau will present GRACE at dawn and dusk (5:50 AM and 8:25 PM) at the University of Venice, Ca’ Foscari, June 5, 7, 8, 9 and 10 with Shelley Niro screening her film TREE each evening at 9.00 PM. Lori Blondeau is a Cree-Saulteaux artist based in Saskatoon Saskatchewan. Artist Shelley Niro, a Bay of Quinte Mohawk, lives in Brantford, Ontario. Curators Ryan Rice (Mohawk of Kahnawake, Quebec) and Nancy Marie Mithlo (Chiricahua Apache, New Mexico) are exhibiting in concert with Italian Anthropologist Elisabetta Frasca of Rome. REQUICKENING is hosted by The University of Venice, Department of Postcolonial Literature, Zattere, Dorsoduro 1405.

Blondeau’s performance GRACE acts as an empowering decolonizing mechanism to balance fate and the disrupting tensions that continue to shift the Native North America diaspora. In Niro’s film TREE, a young Earth Mother is witness to the travesties of capitalism, consumerism, warfare and spiritual trauma that are manifest in contemporary Western society. We experience her loss, her reverberations of grief and ultimately, her ability to manifest life.

For the past decade, the Indigenous Arts Action Alliance (IA3) has shared the beauty and wisdom of contemporary Native North American arts as a component of La Biennale di Venezia. In 2007, we honor a founding member of IA3, the acclaimed artist Harry Fonseca of Santa Fe, New Mexico who died December 28, 2006. For more on his legacy see: http://www.harryfonseca.com/news/index.htm

This event is made possible through the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts Aboriginal Peoples Collaborative Exchange, the Institute of International Education New York, NY (USA) Ontario Arts Council (Canada), The Yakama Nation, Toppenish, WA (USA) and Smith College, Northampton, MA (USA). For press/interviews contact: requickeningproject@gmail.com.

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Aboriginal Collaborative Exchange - “The REQUICKENING Project” Venice 52

Submitted by the Indigenous Arts Action Alliance, Elisabetta Frasca, Director, Nancy Marie Mithlo and Ryan Rice, Curators

Please direct communications to Nancy Marie Mithlo, Tyler Annex 203, Smith College, Northampton, MA 01063 nmithlo@smith.edu (413)585-3683

Aboriginal artists have a proactive role in our diverse communities. Whether they are urban, suburban, rural, or reserve, they secure, critique, innovate and share the cultural knowledge, spirit and traditions of our nations. Artists, curators, art historians and cultural workers continue into the new millennium as participants of our own legacy; writing, producing, documenting, administrating and defining a distinct art historical discourse we can claim as our own. While the margins created by a Western culture may still be present, the Aboriginal arts community stakes a passionate claim to be seen, heard and acknowledged within each artistic discipline. The Aboriginal arts movement traverses and widens the sphere of contested spaces in this age of globalization.

Across the great pond in the “Old World,” we have been privileged and honoured to acknowledge an Aboriginal presence at the Venice Biennale. The international art world has witnessed the provocative and outstanding work by Edward Poitras in 1995 and Fountain (2005) by Rebecca Belmore, at the 51st edition of the 2005 Venice Biennale. The collective Indigenous Arts Action Alliance (IA3) has successfully sponsored three Biennale exhibits (1999, 2001, 2003). In 2005, the National Museum of the American Indian “borrowed” IA3’s merited space for its presentation and entrance to the Venice Biennale with performance artist James Luna’s Emendatio. 

Even as we see these spaces open up and become accessible, an indigenous presence is still imperfect in international art venues. We wish to further the discourse of an Indigenous art history as relevant to our own communities and a global audience. If we are not a participant in Venice 2007, our presence may be forgotten. We see the Venice Biennale is a site of triumph. 
 
It is through the 52 edition of the Venice Biennale where IA3 representative Nancy Marie Mithlo will continue to pursue the goal of establishing an Indigenous presence through her invitation to exchange and collaborate collectively with performance artist and Tribe Inc., director Lori Blondeau, artist/filmmaker Shelley Niro, artist/curator Ryan Rice and Italian coordinator Elisabetta Frasca. The aim of the group is exemplified in its title THE REQUICKENING PROJECT; a reference to the Iroquois condolence ceremony that rectifies states of fragility, and ensuring life continues to flourish. Our exchange and dialogue will ensure and establish a continuum in Aboriginal curatorial practice that will examine community as well as mainstream tactics for making “our” space accessible, vigorous and on a par to the international standards the biennale upholds. How will this aboriginal presence in Venice conceptualize success?  Contrary to inclusion models that require self-sacrifice of ideals, our collective agenda calls upon indigenous knowledges to contribute to the conversation initiated by the Biennale curator Robert Storr.  Our presence seeks to speak of how indigenous people conceptualize the fragility of life, how art speaks to understanding death and destruction as well as the process of healing.  Our dialogue will consider carefully how to avoid an overworked reaction, or response to the hegemonic values of the West.  We will need to consider strategies for a pro-active exhibition style and methodology to be employed in the process of taking a place with other artists of international standing. Blondeau will create, re-assemble, disassemble and perform States of Grace, inspired by her recent work Grace. Shelley Niro will project her short film Tree across the Italian city’s facade.  Both works will invite audiences to witness the relevance and criticality in which traditional knowledge has upon global issues and the human condition. States of Grace will reveal many instances of human vulnerability through Blondeau’s acts of memory, home, displacement, and decolonization. Her performances will expose an Aboriginal perspective of suffering and pain, healing and hope. Niro’s short film Tree pays homage to the “Keep America Beautiful” campaign from the early 1970’s where stoic actor Iron Eyes Cody gazes at the environment and sees it is no longer being cared for or respected. Niro replaces Cody, the perpetual Indian stereotype, with a matriarchal figure who witnesses the same environmental degradation, some 30 years later.  Our efforts seek to make an intellectual statement concerning aboriginal wisdom in the visual and expressive arts. We wish to articulate this beauty through careful workings of body movement, moving images, sound, place, space and contextualization via authorship of essays. We will interpret contemporary manifestations of Indigenous wisdom by reference to the elegant work of Niro and Blondeau. These expressions are in simultaneous interaction with the project curators and coordinators, refining, challenging and seeking the clearest and most direct statement, given the opportunity that the Biennale affords.  The meta-narratives as they unfold form a basis for new conceptual reasoning, an advanced level of participation in future exhibitions and a more solid presence as unique artistic worlds. The global stage requires our participation. 

The Organization

The Requickening Project comes out of an effort to enhance international partnerships that have developed around issues of commercial exploitation, lack of legitimacy and enforced invisibility of contemporary aboriginal and indigenous arts of Native North America. Against tremendous economic and organizational handicaps, a body of artists, intellectuals and curators has organized over the past decade to ensure that the wisdom and beauty of indigenous communities is recognized in the global platform of the Venice Biennale. This movement has eschewed institutional sponsorship and control, preferring instead to make long-term meaningful connections with committed partners in Italy, Canada and the States.  These efforts have resulted in a continuous presence at the international arts table of the Venice Biennale. IA3’s success has depended upon the personal investments of many people in time, resources and emotions.  They have experimented with processual exhibition techniques, intellectual platforms, varying forms of inclusivity, and modes of mentorship. The first exhibit in 1999 a group show titled Ceremonial explored how a communal response is needed as a witness to important life events.  The 2001 exhibit Umbilicus considered what is the center of the center, how does life orient itself, to what references spiritually and physically?  In 2003 they adopted the notion of Red Skin Dreams or Pellerossasogna to think about identity issues, exploitation, survival and the female presence. These actions are their dissertation theses, their court claims, their chants to the universe, and their contributions for all those that came before.  Their ability to continue these important conversations relies not only upon their dedication and desire, but also the support of an extended community of allies.

The Requickening Project is made up of five individuals who come from various backgrounds in the arts specific to Aboriginal art and its production. Shelley Niro, artist, filmmaker and exhibiting artist of the 2003 Biennale, Lori Blondeau, performance artist and director of Tribe Inc., Ryan Rice, artist, independent curator and co-founder of Nation To Nation and the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective will join Nancy Marie Mithlo, curator, academic and co-founder of the Indigenous Arts Action Alliance and Italian anthropologist Elisabetta Frasca with assistance from Mario di Martino in Venice, together have formed an active organizing group to advance the dialogue of contemporary indigenous arts through The Requickening Project, via exhibition, publication, performance and presentations.  Our collective aims to problematize, conceptualize and intellectualize the Aboriginal presence at the 2007 Venice Biennale.  Drawing upon our rich creative resources, we intend to establish a platform whereby the urgent issues of Native communities may be discussed and made relevant via the productions of our artistic legacies.

Exhibition
April 14 to May 12, 2007
Shelley Niro
© S. Niro, 2006

In this exhibition, I present recent works including the video work Tree and the première of a new photographic installation entitled La Pietà.

Tree pays homage to the “Keep America Beautiful” campaign showing on television across the continent in the early 1970s. Iron Eyes Cody appeared as the stereotypical Indian as he looks around the environment and sees that the landscape is no longer being cared for and that there is little respect for it. He cries one big tear. Even though Iron Eyes isn’t Native and the campaign played on the “stoic representation,” I feel this is a representation we can look at as a role model. Caring for Mother Earth should be our biggest concern at the moment.

In Michelangelo’s Pietà, the mother holds her dead son. Even if I didn’t know some art history I could look at the sculpture and feel for the woman as she lovingly holds the man. It is here where I associate this image with the contemporary worldview of war from a woman’s perspective. I know Michelangelo’s Pietà is a religious notion but it is a universal one of grief. In my La Pietà, I’ve juxtaposed landscape with a young man’s chest. The landscape shows infinite beauty while the young man’s chest shows physical beauty. The two beauties become expendable resources. [S.N.]

Lori Blondeau: http://www.canadianart.ca/articles/Articles_Details.cfm?Ref_num=259

Ryan Rice: http://www.aboriginalcuratorialcollective.org/research/ryanrice.html

Shelley Niro:
http://www.nativenetworks.si.edu/Eng/rose/niro_s.htm

Lori Blondeau, “Some Kinda Princess” 2002