Carleton PhD student Alexandra Kahsenni:io Nahwegahbow made her first foray into the world of curating with the opening of “Temporal Re-imaginings,” an exhibition featuring contemporary Indigenous artists.
Sponsored by the Canada Council for the Arts, the exhibition is on display in the Âjagemô gallery space at 150 Elgin St. until April 30, 2016.
Featuring work from more than 10 different Indigenous artists of different backgrounds, Nahwegahbow said she was interested in examining how Indigenous communities think about time and how different artists have dealt with the idea.
“[In Western understandings] time is seen as forward moving, part of this unfolding of events. And you never want to move backward—you always want to be charging forward,” Nahwegahbow said. “A lot of native people think of time in a very different way. Time kind of overlaps on itself and there’s this constant cycle of renewal and return that happens.”
Nahwegahbow is Anishinaabe and Kanien’keha:ka, and a member of the Whitefish River First Nation in Ontario. She holds an undergraduate and masters degree in art history, and is pursuing her PhD in Cultural Mediations at Carleton.
Heather Anderson, curator of the Carleton University Art Gallery, said Nahwegahbow approached CUAG to ask about borrowing pieces from their collection for the exhibition.
“We were delighted to accommodate her request and have some of the works from our collection [included],” Anderson said. “We want to support Alex as an emerging curator.”
There are four pieces from the CUAG collection in “Temporal Re-imaginings,” including a work by famous Ojibwe artist Carl Beam, as well as three other prints by Inuit artists.
“CUAG has a long exhibition history of showing works by Indigenous artists . . . It’s definitely a strength of CUAG’s programming,” Anderson said.
John Sobol, who works in communications and public engagement at the Council, said the goal of the Âjagemô space is to represent a diversity of artists and artistic communities.
“Âjagemô is about bringing people together, really,” Sobol said. “The goal is to have a place for art and for the public to connect with art.”
According to Sobol, the council is mandated to promote enjoyment and access to art by all Canadians.
“I think that the exhibition has been hugely successful,” Sobol said. “It was important for the council to show publicly how serious we are about supporting Indigenous arts. The work itself is a wonderful and a very provocative collection, so we’re very proud to have it.”
Nahwegahbow said she sees an Indigenous artist’s ability to represent the idea of moving across time as a kind of “superpower.”
“If you can access the past . . . we can also envision alternative futures and futures that are empowered and Indigenized,” she said. “I think [artists] hold a lot of power in terms of bringing people together and bringing these representations of Indigenized futures. Because once you can imagine an alternative future it immediately creates a genuine rethinking of the status quo.”
Nahwegahbow said she was touched by how the Ottawa art community supported her through her first curatorial experience.
“People are so generous with their time and I’m really grateful for that,” she said. “I just hope people like the show and enjoy it and that it incites conversations.”
