Haudenosaunee artist in residence at Art Gallery of Ontario

Toronto-based Mohawk artist Greg Staats launched his three-month term as Artist-in-Residence at the Art Gallery of Ontario on Oct. 14 with an evening of reflection about the Haudenosaunee worldview.

Fifty-one-year old Staats works in photography, performance, video installation and sculpture. Born and raised on Six Nations, he’s lived and practiced his art in Toronto for the last 25 years or so. A recipient of the Duke and Duchess of York Prize in Photography and a past faculty member of the Banff Centre, Staat’s work has been exhibited throughout North America.

Joining Staats at the AGO’s Jackman Hall were two internationally-renowned Tuscarora historians. Dr. Jolene Richard and Rick Hill engaged in an on-stage conversation with Staats about art, cultural identity and the importance of place, using Staats’ photographic work as the starting point.

Rickard is associate professor and director of the American Indian Program at Cornell University, as well as a visual historian, artist and curator. Hill, an artist and photographer, has worked with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. He is currently with the Deyohah·:ge: Indigenous Knowledge Centre located on the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory.

Staat’s artistic work since 1979 has been a journey of discovery – discovery of self, home and cultural tradition. He explores the significance of tradition, particularly the Haudenosaunee Condolence Ceremony, in his exploration of relationships, trauma and renewal. His intent for the evening’s discussion was not only to offer a broader knowledge base through his guests, but also to challenge some of his own language about how he talks about his work.

Describing his work in an artist statement of 80 words or less is challenging, said Staats because of the need to explain the cultural metaphors. Rick Hill agreed this does present a problem because cultural metaphors are big conceptual ideas, spiritual ideas and grand historical ideas. You can bring it down to a word or phrase in the Mohawk language which explains everything about the core thing, he continued, but the English language is constructed differently. “The best way to think about it is when you’re talking in English, it’s like you’re watching a black and white TV from the 1950s. You can kind of see it, but it’s fuzzy, it doesn’t have much depth. But to think in the Mohawk language or any of our languages, it’s like being in the middle of a surround sound, technicolour, 3-D movie.”

One of the works Staats showed sparked discussion about the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women. Staats took a found photograph of a young woman, Tashina General, who had been murdered at Six Nations. Staats manipulated the image, embedding phrases he had chosen from the Condolence Ceremony and the report about her murder. The resulting image was a fractured face. “The photo is emblematic of the condition of Indigenous women,” said Rickard, “Not only in North America, but the world in that the face is fractured and not in focus.” Rickard said people have begun to acknowledge the fractured status of Indigenous women in their own communities.

“This was a rupture that happened in the community,” she said. “It was community member on community member assault.”

Rickard commented that the image exemplified Staats’ skillful use of Western modernist language and constructs combined with cultural metaphor.

Staats said he’s been working with about 20 phrases from the Condolence Ceremony and incorporating them into his work since 2008. The concept of trauma and renewal within the framework of shared experiences has been critical to his art.

Rick Hill explained the Condolence is “a ceremony where we lay to rest an old chief who died and lift the individuals of his family up,” through song and caring. When I see people doing ceremonies, said Hill, “it amazes me. It’s out of the kindness of their heart they’ll step up and do this. This, to me, is what keeps our culture going, however it’s going, wherever it’s going.”

Staats has an installation in the gallery of Canadian art at the AGO. One of the pieces done in 2009 is titled, For Leonard Peltier. It’s a simple screen, positioned where the wall meets the floor, which displays the days, hours, minutes and seconds that Peltier continues to be imprisoned.

“We are people who are trying to recover that knowledge which was packed away for safety purposes,” said Hill. “But as the artists are bringing forth these things, it’s like they’re presenting a mirror to our people and we have to talk about this because look at our people. In many ways, maybe it’s the visual artists who will lead a new way of applying the culture to meet real human needs.”