Gallery 101’s recent exhibit Tânte Ohci by Cree-Métis artist Jaime Morse, uses humour, and cultural symbols — from hand-dyed fish scales to Polaroids and bones — to explore the power of connecting to one’s land and roots.
The exhibit’s name is in Nehiyawak, meaning “Where from?”
“Where’s your land? Where’s your people? What’s your history?” Morse asked when discussing the importance of the exhibit at the gallery opening this fall.
A line of Polaroid photos sits at the gallery entrance. Entitled “Where I Lean,” each photo captures a colourful moment, full of big smiles and the people most important to Morse.
“I was afraid to disrupt a polaroid,” Morse said about her pieces, many of which are beaded along the frames or cut into shreds.
“It’s like stepping into a Métis photo album and seeing the culture,” said Howard Adler, Asinabka Festival founder and a gallery attendee.
The exhibit included a mobile piece with colourful beadwork, ranging from patches to adorned Polaroids. Morse said she used hand-dyed fish scales between the hanging items to represent stars.
“Beadwork and fishscale adornments traverse through space with genuine affection, enhancing very intimate photos of kin,” Jason Baerg, curator of Tânte Ochi, told the Charlatan in a statement.
On the opposite wall from the mobile and Polaroid pieces are photographs and a tapestry of Morse’s relatives, adorned with symbols of Morse’s culture and roots.
Morse told the audience that though the phrase “in loving memory” is generally associated with people who have passed. Her father, who is still alive, humorously says, “You should remember me while I’m here.”
Among the photographs, a fabric and print piece shows Morse surrounded by her family. The textile still holds the scent of cigarette smoke from her father’s home.
“Green symbolizes life and hope on a wall painted in this colour, where ‘tânitê nihtâ-pimipahtân / From where I carry forward’ features two large photographs,” Baerg wrote.
Another piece closer to the entrance, “Weathered Love,” uses reclaimed wooden planks from Morse’s hometown of Buffalo Lake, Alta. Pictures of the scenery and land are pasted on the planks.
Morse’s father, Randy Mercier, plays a large role in the Tânte Ohci exhibit.
In “Basket by Randy Mercier,” Morse’s father’s fish scale harvests are displayed in glass jars. They had been hand-dyed with natural products, and some of the scales were used in other art pieces throughout the exhibit.
Light was projected to symbolize lightning onto a large, dark blue painted piece across from a video of Morse’s father. In the video, Mercier was fishing when he noticed a strange-looking sky.
He mentions that the sky was “freakin’ me out,” before a phenomenon known as a transient luminous event light up the night.
Having an audience supporting her work was important to Morse, she said at the gallery opening, adding that there’s also “an educational aspect” to the art.
“It’s about when somebody says ‘I’m Indigenous,’ this is how you answer,” Morse said.
The Tânte Ohci exhibit runs at Gallery 101 until Oct. 18.
Featured image by Aria Wilson/the Charlatan
