Aboriginal culture viewed through urban aesthetic

Beat Nation is an exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery that features a variety of artists who juxtapose different visions of Aboriginal culture with urban youth and hip hop aesthetics.

The exhibit, which features more than 20 artists from different Aboriginal communities across North America, showcases a variety of artistic mediums including video, photography, audio, painting and installation.

Many pieces in the exhibit represent the heritage of the artists or deal with Aboriginal issues in a fresh way, incorporating vinyl records, skateboards, graffiti murals and even low-rider bikes.

“Aboriginal hip hop has become an important forum for storytelling, Indigenous languages and political activism,” said Kathleen Ritter, co-curator of the exhibit.

“We see artists using similar strategies in the visual arts by appropriating mainstream pop culture to reflect Aboriginal identity. This is what Beat Nation reflects.”

One display by Emily Carr graduate Brian Jungen features Nike Air Jordan runners reformed into Aboriginal masks.

Jungen, who is of Dane-zaa descent, wanted to show a relation between mass produced consumer objects and “authentic” Aboriginal artifacts with his display.

“The Native tradition is to craft one object into another,” said Jungen.

“It was kind of improvised salvaging born out of the practical and economic necessity, and it greatly influenced the way I see the world as an artist.”

Another display by Hoka Skenandore, which consists of colourful mixed media done on vinyl records, showcases the artist’s fascination with street art and music.

“I collect records and have been doing so since I was a kid,” said Skenadore.

“At some point in the early 2000s I had seen a painted record by [a local artist] and I loved it. Around the same time I stole a Sotheby’s catalogue with a Gerhard Richter painting, it was one of his abstractions on a record… I saw fit to attempt to combine these two ideas together: graffiti meets fine art on vinyl.”

Along with gallery displays, Beat Nation also features film-viewing rooms with screenings of video art, such as Mohawk artist Jackson 2bears’s multimedia collage “Heritage Mythologies.”

The 13-minute-long video juxtaposes photographs and various video clips with hip hop and traditional music.
The images show moments in history like students in residential schools and protesters holding “no Olympics on stolen land” signs, dealing with hard issues like racism, colonialism and discrimination.

“I envision my practice as a form of cultural critique in which I explore alternative ways to engage with the question of Native spirituality in our modern, technological society,” said Jackson 2bears, who is based out of Victoria.

Tania Willard, co-curator of Beat Nation, said that, as a whole, the exhibit expresses freedom from Aboriginal oppression.

“Beat Nation shows, despite the many efforts to repress and eradicate our culture, that we are here. And we are thriving,” said Willard.

“Like the beats of our sacred drums, we echo our ancestors in our expression of culture regardless of medium.”

Beat Nation will be at the Vancouver Art Gallery until June 3.