From the Collection: Rebecca Belmore

Today we’re exploring the work of Indigenous contemporary artist, Rebecca Belmore, from the AGP Permanent Collection.

Belmore is well known for speaking about identity through performative acts – integrating natural materials and repetitive movements to say something with her body. We can see this in her large-scale photographs, “Untitled 1, 2, and 3”, from the series “White Thread” (2004) which examines the relationship between spaces, Indigeneity, colonialism, and the body.

Emphasizing form, white fabric is wrapped around Belmore’s body; contorting and suspending her in a white room that insinuates the suffocating nature of a space rooted in colonial practices.

“Her photographs of a woman wrapped in cloth suggest, alternatively, swaddling, a papoose, a straitjacket, and even Harry Houdini,” explains Clint Burnham in an article for ARTFORUM². The work Belmore produces is both performative and political. This work confronts the nature of an Indigenous body in an institutional space, and the fine line between pain and performance.

A member of the Lac Seul First Nation (Anishinaabe), Rebecca Belmore is an internationally recognized multidisciplinary artist. She is the recipient of many awards and accolades including the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation’s VIVA Award (2004), the Hnatyshyn Visual Arts Award (2009), the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts (2013), and the Gershon Iskowitz Prize (2016). She has received honorary doctorates from OCAD University (2005), Emily Carr University of Art + Design (2018), and NSCAD University (2019).