Saturday, July 26 · 12:30 p.m. · Walter Phillips Gallery, The Banff Centre
Presented as part of the 2008 Banff Summer Arts Festival
Artist Rebecca Belmore will reactivate her work, Ayum-ee-aawach Oomama-mowan: Speaking to Their Mother, this Saturday, July 26, for the Walter Phillips Gallery’s recently opened exhibition, Bureau de change. The internationally acclaimed landmark performance will speak to current aboriginal issues, and is presented as part of The Banff Centre’s 75th anniversary celebrations.
Originally created at the Centre in 1991, the work is composed of a giant wooden megaphone, six feet wide at the mouth and seven feet long. It acts as a literal mouthpiece for aboriginal artists and activists to address the land. First performed in a mountain meadow in Banff that summer, Belmore’s performance has since travelled to various locations across Canada for political demonstrations.
“This artwork was my response to what is now referred to in Canadian history as the ‘Oka Crisis.’ During the summer of 1990, many protests were mounted in support of the Mohawk Nation of Kanesatake in their struggle to maintain their territory,” Belmore has said. “This object was taken into many First Nations communities — reservation, rural, and urban. I was particularly interested in locating the Aboriginal voice on the land. Asking people to address the land directly was an attempt to hear political protest as poetic action.”
Belmore has invited aboriginal artists and activists, including Lori Blondeau, Marcia Crosby, Allen Deleary, Richard Hill, Cheryl L’Hirondelle, and James Luna, to accompany her on this return to the original performance site. Ayum-ee-aawach Oomama-mowan: Speaking to Their Mother aims to engage nature and community with current cultural and political issues. The Walter Phillips Gallery will provide transportation to the site for all participants and spectators at 12:30 p.m., to return by 5 p.m. This outdoor event will take place rain or shine.
A 2005 Fleck Fellowship recipient in Visual Arts at The Banff Centre, Belmore attended the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto and is internationally recognized for her performance and installation art. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. She participated in the 1998 Sydney Biennale and the National Gallery of Canada exhibition Land, Spirit, Power, and was Canada’s official representative at the 2005 Venice Biennale. Belmore has had solo exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Dunlop Gallery in Regina, and the Rhode Island Museum of Art in Providence, and is currently showing her work in a solo exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Ayum-ee-aawach Oomama-mowan was purchased by the Walter Phillips Gallery in 2007 with the support of the York Wilson Endowment Award.