Thursday, January 22, 2009

Lindsay Delaronde





Lindsay is a new artist to the crawl and is currently earning her Masters in Visual Art at UVic. Her statement is included:

My name is Lindsay Delaronde, I am part of the Mohawk Nation, originally from Kahnawake, Que.

My work visually expresses the relationship between spirituality and the physicality of the environment. Also, conveying the social, political and economical issues relating to First Nations peoples; through printmaking and installation-based work. I integrate traditional Native art, relating to culture and way of life, with my own personal experience and perception of my Native culture, history, art and identity.

In medium sized, brightly colored screen prints, which are digitally manipulated photographs, are juxtaposed images inspired and influenced by Native peoples and their culture within archives of photography and personal photographs. I portray these prints to create the viewer to re-think their perception and understanding of First Nations peoples. In other installation based work, I re-create and express the experience of Native rituals, using traditional means of ceremony and healing. I construct and create with materials gathered from the natural environment, and create narratives that express and expand the relationship between the individual, and nature.

Throughout the colonization and attempt to assimilate First Nations people, anthropologists, art historians and art critics have written our history for us. They concluded that Native art along with my culture was “dead”. But I am very much alive, breathing and creating. I’ve been influenced by all the static and false conclusions upon Aboriginal peoples, culture, art and history and use them as the starting point for my research process.

Works like, Spirit Hut, a human size hut made of all natural material, red willow and cedar bows, is a space that can be entered. Inside there is sage, sweet grass and cedar bundles for smudging, which represents an act of cleansing and prayer. The Spirit Hut, signifies the relationship between the environment and it’s connection with human spirituality. The installation was constructed and sustained outdoors of The Emily Carr Institute. Spirit Hut's purpose is to reflect and express ones personal interpretation of spirituality. The architecture, scale, materiality and traditional functions were inspired from a Native sweat lodge. But was also designed without the usage of heat and rocks. The installation carries the traditional aspect of re-birth, cleansing and prayer, expressed in a contemporary context, which creates a new understanding and interpretation of my Native culture and its traditions.

As a First Nations artist I am a visual interpreter of my own culture's history. I find myself integrated in this continuum of contemporary Native arts and culture. As long as I continue to define myself through self-exploration and consumption
of knowledge. I am able to grow as a Native woman with an identity all my own, influenced by the past while constructing the future.

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