Musée d’art de Joliette

Icy plumes rise from the winding currents of the Outaragasipi River that flows in front of the Musée d’art de Joliette. Its waters seem to smoke tobacco and sweetgrass. This winter smoke will take us where our dreams are.

At the Musée, an impressive group of artists become dreamcatchers of sorts. They turn rebellious energies into images, ceremonial objects, short films, sculptural installations, paintings, photographs and nomadic performances. The common characteristic of these Indigenous artworks is the combined fluidity of hot tobacco smoke and the icy vapour of whitewater. Imagination overflows in the city. It occupies all six directions, adding to the four cardinal points a sacred element that is anchored in Mother Earth and connected to the celestial world of the Okis, or protective spirits.

These works creatively reflect the shamanistic energy of ceremonial tobacco, the three drums—Innu, Atikamekw and Wendat—and the deer shoulder blade suspended high above the lobby. Waban A’kis and Wendat artist Christine Sioui Wawanoloath immediately projects us into this world with her large illustration Là où sont nos rêves [Where Our Dreams Are], installed on the lobby’s large glass walls. Her second piece, Esprit du rêve [The Dream’s Spirit] guides us toward the main gallery.

There, two flowing, aerial installations undulate and radiate. Le sang de la Terre-Mère [The Blood of Mother Earth], by Sonia Robertson of Mashteuiatsh, links the healing powers of river water to the wishes of women from the Lanaudière and Val-d’Or Native Friendship Centres. The second installation, inspired by a melody composed by an Atikamekw woman, is inscribed in the series water song by Kanien’kehá:ka artist Hannah Claus. Elsewhere, Jacques Newashish transports forest life into the white cube by stretching a prospector’s tent over poles gathered on the land, thus giving a nomadic feel to his in-between-worlds. His proudly rebellious peer, Atikamekw artist Eruoma Awashish, focuses on youth with her work Poings levés vers l’avenir [Fists Raised to the Future]. Her mural Onimiskiw, named after her daughter, was created in situ in the Musée’s corner vitrine, and is visible from outside the museum.

Hydro is a dramatic installation by Anishinaabe artist Caroline Monnet and Wendat artist Ludovic Boney. It upends our domestic understanding of the cabling, recording and lighting technologies that rely entirely on dams, reservoirs, flooding and displacement, as experienced by the Eeyou Istchee, Algonquin and Atikamekw Nations. Other works transform this exhibition into a veritable multidisciplinary event: a short film by Caroline Monnet and Daniel Watchorn on residential schools inserted within the Musée’s permanent exhibition on the theme of the sacred; Catherine Boivin’s video selection; the twelve feminist photographs from the cross-Canada project Resilience presented on billboards throughout the city of Joliette; and a performance by emerging artists Catherine Boivin and Terry Randy Awashish, which will take place at the closing of the exhibition.

This is my vision of Wendat. Between esthetics and ethics, astonishment and wonder, I wish to “rewild” our relationship to the world and encourage the renewal of mutual relations. This imaginary camp holds ancient roots that are bound to the future.

Curator: Guy Sioui Durand