Last night, I attended (can we still use that word for YouTube livestreams?) Dunlop Art Gallery’s Artist Talk: End of the World/Beginning of the World with Andrea Carlson. Andrea has work in the Dunlop’s States of Collapes show that’s currently on, a show that couldn’t be more informative to my own work these days. I’ve really lucked-out. Earlier this winter, I attended their “Opening Remarks and Artist Talk” on this show and wrote an entry for this journal on it as well.

The Facebook event description of tonight’s talk was as follows: “Chicago-based artist Andrea Carlson will discuss her work that interrogates the historical role of the museum in the collection and interpretation of cultural objects as a form of misrepresentation and colonialism.”

After introducing herself in Anishinaabe, Andrea began her talk by showing photos of the land she is from, Grand Portage, Minnesota. She said of this place that “when I think of where my work ‘sits,’ I think of this place.” I found it powerful to hear someone else say this because I have the landscapes of British Columbia in my mind when I work with clay, as I’ve previously expostulated on in a personal essay “on clay.” While I am of immigrant ancestry and by no means claim to truly belong to British Columbia (I was born in Montreal, in fact), that province feels like home, and my work is in part a response to its landscapes.

Andrea also spoke about storytelling, and how “our stories are frozen, we breathe life into them when we perform.” Describing a painting of a plate that depicts the Dakota 38 + 2, when the US Army simultaneously hung 38 Indigenous men for their resistance during the Dakota war and uprising of 1862. She asked, rhetorically, how can anyone eat off of this plate? We “heap stories onto objects,” she said, “and my paintings are objects too.” I wonder, when hearing this, how every object is a “heap of stories.” What are the stories in my work? How important is it that these stories are easy for viewers to “read”?

Storytelling is key in Andrea’s work. She showed examples of her massive paintings (painting-drawings? she uses oil, acrylic, ink, and colour pencil on paper) that function both as temporal and spacial film strips; she explained this to us — in short, these pieces show movement when viewed both horizontally and vertically. The connection to film goes beyond their structure of multiple individual “frames” — with their size and bright forms that “pop out” at you, the works mimic movie billboards, leading us to ask what is the film we’d see? What is the story taking place here? Even Andrea’s website requires viewers to scroll through images of her work from left to right rather than from top to bottom, more closely imitating the way we read.

One work of Andrea’s that I’m particularly interested in is Red Exit (115 x 183 inches).

Andrea described this piece as being about recreating the world, about healing, and about survival. Images central the work are the loon from the Ojibwe narrative as the earth re-creator, the infinity sign, and the “Man Mound” that appears to be walking away.

These are themes that are in much of her work. The piece that she is showing in States of Collapse is Apocalypse Domani. Dunlop’s web page for this exhibit describes this work in the following way:

“Through the implication that the colonizer, as a consuming machine, is incapable of forging its own path, Andrea Carlson’s Apocalypse Domani proposes that it is Indigenous peoples who are better equipped [than settlers] for survival.”

The connection between colonization and the climate catastrophe that we’re experiencing is a topic I’ve spent some time thinking and reading about. I would have liked if Andrea had talked about Apocalypse Domani during her talk. I wish that I could have another conversation with her about this issue as well as other questions I have about her practice.

In the Q&A period, via the YouTube chat-box, I asked Andrea the following question:

While very different, “Red Earth” and other multi-paneled pieces of yours remind me of David Opdyke. ​Opdyke’s “This Land” also embodies a hugely rich landscape comprised of individual and highly detailed images. What is the significance of the fragment to your work?

Andrea elaborated on how she views the genre of landscape art and what the history of the landscape reveals, especially from an Indigenous perspective. She talked about how the Flemish became very interested in landscape art after they removed the Spanish occupation. She said it was a sign that they were exhibiting pride in their landscapes again, “owning a little piece of the land in the painting.” She also talked about the relationship between landscape art and the colonial gaze, and how she thinks about decolonizing landscapes and landscapes that one can’t access (they only exist in her paintings). There is so much here to think about, though I wish she’d also answered my question about the significance of the fragment in her work! 🙂

I’ll report one final detail from her talk that I found especially beautiful. She spoke about painted turtles, and how they carry on their body a painting that “they keep between themselves and the earth” — a very intimate painting that one only gets to see only when the turtle is in trouble. This is an image (or description) of art, earth, and Indigenous ways of thinking that I’ll be pondering for a long while.

Once again, I am grateful to the Dunlop for organizing this show and this talk.