Mimicry with Monica Canilao and Outi Pieski

Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, 533 Old York Road, London
Mimicry with Monica Canilao and Outi Pieski image
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Event has ended
This event ended on Friday 21st of November 2014
Admission
Free
Venue Information
Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery (Wandsworth)
Old York Road, SW18 1TG
Nearest Tube/Rail Stations
Wandsworth Town 0.08 miles

Private View 20 November 2014, 6:30 - 9:00PM
With special performance by Sami folk singer Niko Valkeapää

Our pasts are powerfully tied to our present, the lives of all our ancestors before us leading to where we are today. Imagine that past now. Imagine herds of wild bison, the broad flat plains of America; imagine the smell of a new forest, the unbroken view of the great Atlantic Ocean marking the end of the world as you know it. Now let us refocus, zoom out of this great continent and shift our gaze east, further, further across the water, up through Europe and the Baltic Sea until we reach the Arctic Circle. There, under the crown of the world, see snowy storms and endless tundra. Elk and reindeer travel across great frozen lakes under the electric dance of the Northern Lights. Both histories are home to two indigenous peoples, children of the dawn of the world who still remain, vibrant and alive, even when modern life and endless colonisation have changed the face of the globe. So it is that Mimicry draws on the two very different yet compellingly complementary heritages of Native American artist Monica Canilao and Laplander Outi Pieski.

Canilao is the great granddaughter of a Chinook Native American princess while Pieski is a Lapp, or more accurately, a Sami, as the indigenous people who inhabit Northern Scandinavia (stretching across Norway, Sweden, Finland and Western Russia) are called. The two women are united by complex historical contexts of cultural repression and denial of their people, beauty in craft, and existing as something of an enigma, struggling to retain aspects of their histories amongst an increasingly modernised world. This interest in their own heritage has led them to seek to ‘mimic’ the past – not to copy, but, in the words of Canilao, “to preserve these beautiful histories in the things that we make as a celebration of the old ways of doing things by hand and the passing down of tradition.” What we have here is an exploration of personal and cultural stories that are delved into, mined, researched and then reconstituted to forge new histories as a way of not losing what the past has to teach us.

The rust-coloured, feathered and collage work of Canilao often draws on the traditional colours and materials of the Native American cultures. In Mimicry, she presents us with a series of new works, created from old pin up posters. She imbues these nearly disintegrating relics with new life by weaving, sewing and using collage in different elements such as old paper, tea bags and lace. Her practice often transforms recognisable creatures and people into forms: by painting and using collage over existing images she is able to give them fresh stories and life. “The only constant in my life has been that I’ve always wanted to be creating, building, drawing, altering,” she has said. “My art practice is a way to generate a personal and living history. My community and collaborators, my roots and their nearly lost traditions, my neighborhood and its trash piles are all integral, necessary parts of my life and art.” It is this exploration of human beauty throughout time, and its subsequent abandonment and decay that, coupled with an exploration of “abandoned spaces and collecting pieces of cities and carrying them with me” has come to characterise Canilao’s life. This archiving of past moments and their subsequent transformation allows her to rebuild “narratives of forgotten lives, now enshrined with paint, graphite, metal, bone, cloth and other found remnants.” In doing so she explores the space that exists between not just past and present, but between the everyday and the sacred – the forgotten and the personal are transformed and re-appropriated to create a “newborn mythology.”

Tags: Art

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