Jane Ash Poitras: New Acquisitions of Contemporary First Nations Art

Recently-acquired works by renowned Canadian Aboriginal artist featured in ROM’s Gallery of Canada’s First People

The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) announces Jane Ash Poitras: New Acquisitions of Contemporary First Nations Art, a display of four recently-acquired original works by one of Canada’s preeminent artists. Best known for her expressive mixed-media assemblages, in which Jane Ash Poitras explored the impact of colonialism, both past and present, through powerful juxtapositions of personal and historic imagery, these paintings also represent part of the artist’s ongoing investigation of traditional non-Western medicines and the ’secrets’ of plants, including their scientific importance and spiritual significance to various cultures. Jane Ash Poitras will be on display in the Daphne Cockwell Gallery of Canada’s First Peoples from September 25, 2010 to September 2011.

“We are pleased to feature these newly acquired works by Jane Ash Poitras in Contemporary Expressions, the dedicated space for contemporary Native artwork in the ROM’s Gallery of Canada: First Peoples,” said Trudy Nicks, ROM’s Senior Curator, Ethnohistory. “Her vibrant and thought-provoking work adds a powerful contemporary voice to our gallery’s presentation of Canada’s earliest societies.”

Among the featured works is Buffalo Seed (2004), illustrated above. Buffalo Seed is concerned with traditional knowledge and its loss. Native peoples learned of the importance of sunflowers—native to North America and cultivated by Indigenous peoples as early as 3000 BC— by observing the buffalo, just as they learned of the medicinal properties of other plants by observing other animals. Poitras has juxtaposed it with a 19th century white artist’s depiction of buffalo hunting, photographs of traditional elders, and images of death. The buffalo hunting theme in Buffalo Seed is complemented by three early paintings by 19th century artist George Catlin from the ROM's historic painting collection.

The Extermination (1997) chronicles the slaughter of buffalo herds in the late 19th century that not only removed the animals and their special knowledge, it also undermined Plains Indian economy and led to the loss of Native cultures and traditional knowledge. The artist has borrowed buffalo imagery from an 1880s drawing by Frank Henderson, an Arapaho orphan and contrasted it with the human skulls of the Rwanda genocide. The stark imagery of this piece not only depicts that harsh reality of human destruction but, Poitras says, should serve as a warning that escalating human violence and destruction of the environment “will lead to our own extermination.”

The largest piece in the exhibit—a triptych 25 feet by 9 feet—is Potato Peeling 101 to Ethnobotanty 101 (2004), which graphically contrasts the forced assimilation of Native people in residential schools, where they were taken from their families, denied their language and culture and trained to be housemaids and farm workers. In reality the history and culture of those enslaved children already carried the medicinal and other healing wisdom of their ancestors. The last panel of the work celebrates the high level of academic and professional achievements of Native people today.

It’s Good for Your Heart (2003) focuses on foxglove and its healing properties for heart disease, just one of the many Indigenous medicines that the artist explored in her ethnobotany-related studies and art-making.

These four works were featured in a large exhibition entitled Consecrated Medicine, which toured across Canada for several years, curated by Virginia Eichhorn, author of the exhibition catalogue.

About the artist:

Jane Ash Poitras, RCA is an internationally acclaimed visual artist whose work has been showcased in numerous solo and group exhibitions around the world, and can be found in many prestigious public, private and commercial collections. She is a graduate of the University of Alberta with degrees in microbiology and printmaking, and has a Master of Fine Arts in Painting and Sculpture from New York’s Columbia University. She is a longtime lecturer at the U of A and a much-in-demand guest lecturer across North America and overseas. Respected for her generous support of Aboriginal and community causes, her numerous honours include her RCA designation from the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, the Alberta Centennial Medal, the 2006 National Aboriginal Achievement Award for Arts and Culture, the University of Alberta Alumni Award of Excellence, and the City of Edmonton Cultural Hall of Fame.

Jane Ash Poitras, of Cree/Dene descent, was born in the northern community of Fort Chipewyan, Alberta and grew up in Edmonton. She meets regularly with Elders from many Native communities to hear their stories and to learn from them. She travels often, allowing her to observe and partake in the rituals of various Native cultures. By doing so, she brings a very humanist approach to her work. She isn’t just trying to give information – rather her work is about sharing knowledge. Her visual presentation of First Nations has had a tremendous impact on Canadian art.

Programming:

Jane Ash Poitras: First Nations Artist: On Thursday, September 23, 2010 from 7 – 8 pm, Greg Hill, Curator and Head of the Department of Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Canada, joins the artist Jane Ash Poitras to discuss history, culture and the environment. Poitras shares her knowledge and interest in traditional, non-Western medicines and the healing value of plants. Lecture in the Signy and Cléophée Eaton Theatre is followed by a Q&A. Cost is $17/ ROM Members $15.

Artist Tour with Jane Ash Poitras: On Wednesday, September 22, 2010 from 2 - 3 pm, the artist provides a guided tour of her work in the exhibition Jane Ash Poitras: New Acquisitions of Contemporary First Nations Art. This will be followed by a reception from 3 to 4 pm with an opportunity to talk to the artist. Cost is Member $15 / Friends of the Canadian Collections $12.