White Thread / 2003 / Photograph
Untitled 1, 2, 3 / 2004 / Photograph
Photo credit: Donna Hagerman
Category: Artworks
Temperance
2004 / Tribe, Saskatoon, SK / Installation
Temperance is an installation that centres around the freezing deaths of Indigenous men outside a power plant in Saskatoon. The installation consists of a video projected on plexiglass of the smokestacks at the Queen Elizabeth II Power Station at sunrise. In front of the plexiglass hangs a hand-made chandelier made from light-bulbs and broken wine bottles in the shape of a cross. On the wall behind the plexiglass is a portrait of Queen Elizabeth.
Lori Blondeau and Lynn Bell, On the Fightin’ Side, Fuse Magazine, 2005
Photo credit: Tribe
Temperance is an installation that centres around the freezing deaths of Indigenous men outside a power plant in Saskatoon. The installation consists of a video projected on plexiglass of the smokestacks at the Queen Elizabeth II Power Station at sunrise. In front of the plexiglass hangs a hand-made chandelier made from light-bulbs and broken wine bottles in the shape of a cross. On the wall behind the plexiglass is a portrait of Queen Elizabeth.
Lori Blondeau and Lynn Bell, On the Fightin’ Side, Fuse Magazine, 2005
Photo credit: Tribe
The Named and the Unnamed
2002 / Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC / Video installation
The Named and the Unnamed is a video installation where the video document of Belmore’s performance entitled Vigil is projected onto a screen embedded with approximately 50 lightbulbs. Vigil took place on June 23, 2002 at the corner of Gore Street and Cordova Street in Vancouver, BC.
Video credit: Paul Wong
Photo credit: Howard Ursuliak / Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery
The Named and the Unnamed is a video installation where the video document of Belmore’s performance entitled Vigil is projected onto a screen embedded with approximately 50 lightbulbs. Vigil took place on June 23, 2002 at the corner of Gore Street and Cordova Street in Vancouver, BC.
Video credit: Paul Wong
Photo credit: Howard Ursuliak / Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery
Freeze
2006 / with Osvaldo Yero / Nuit Blanche, Royal Car Wash, Toronto, ON / Sculpture
In a unique sculptural collaboration, Rebecca Belmore and Osvaldo Yero used ice to make a new artwork, melted over the duration of the long sleepless night of Nuit Blanche. A large block of ice signified a life-size form, the body absent, as evidence that it too will disappear. This work symbolically suggested the frozen land of Canada in winter. To be left outside for too long is to die.
Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, Toronto, 2006
Photo credit: Miklos Legrady, Michael Beynon
In a unique sculptural collaboration, Rebecca Belmore and Osvaldo Yero used ice to make a new artwork, melted over the duration of the long sleepless night of Nuit Blanche. A large block of ice signified a life-size form, the body absent, as evidence that it too will disappear. This work symbolically suggested the frozen land of Canada in winter. To be left outside for too long is to die.
Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, Toronto, 2006
Photo credit: Miklos Legrady, Michael Beynon
come in cielo così in terra
2006 / Franco Soffiantino Gallery, Torino, Italy / Exhibition
In a body of work produced for this exhibition, Rebecca Belmore takes on the imagery of Christianity to speak of Indigenous resistance in Canada, where their cultures were forever altered by the church. Over the course of several generations, until the 1970s, churches and the government forcefully took Indigenous children from their families and placed them in boarding schools. They were forced to speak English and were often subjected to terrible physical and sexual abuse. Generations of children lost their languages and their sense of family and identity.
An angel’s wing made of cornhusks welcomes visitors into the church-like space. There on the wall is a copy of the New Testament, translated into Belmore’s family language, Anishinaabemowin, which she does not speak. In a video projection, Belmore enacts a rite of speechlessness, resistance, and compassion. The exhibition includes digital prints mounted on aluminium that represent an Indigenous Adam and Eve standing in a vacant parking lot and floating like angels in the sky.
Franco Soffiantino Gallery, Rebecca Belmore: come in cielo così in terra, 2006
Photo credit: Franco Soffiantino Gallery
In a body of work produced for this exhibition, Rebecca Belmore takes on the imagery of Christianity to speak of Indigenous resistance in Canada, where their cultures were forever altered by the church. Over the course of several generations, until the 1970s, churches and the government forcefully took Indigenous children from their families and placed them in boarding schools. They were forced to speak English and were often subjected to terrible physical and sexual abuse. Generations of children lost their languages and their sense of family and identity.
An angel’s wing made of cornhusks welcomes visitors into the church-like space. There on the wall is a copy of the New Testament, translated into Belmore’s family language, Anishinaabemowin, which she does not speak. In a video projection, Belmore enacts a rite of speechlessness, resistance, and compassion. The exhibition includes digital prints mounted on aluminium that represent an Indigenous Adam and Eve standing in a vacant parking lot and floating like angels in the sky.
Franco Soffiantino Gallery, Rebecca Belmore: come in cielo così in terra, 2006
Photo credit: Franco Soffiantino Gallery
Wave Sound
2017 / LandMarks2017/Repères2017, Partners in Art / Sculpture
Belmore’s sculptures for LandMarks 2017/Repères 2017, Wave Sound, encourage visitors to actually pause and listen to the natural sounds of the land. The four sculptures, situated in Banff National Park (AB), Pukaskwa National Park (ON), Georgian Bay Islands National Park (ON), and Gros Morne National Park (NL), vary in shape, responding and conforming to each natural site. Each sculpture amplifies the living sounds that are particular to the location. Each sculpture, in its own way, encourages us to hear and consider the land and our relationship to the land. Whether it’s the Rocky Mountains of Banff with its ancient forests, running rivers and meadowland; Pukaskwa’s rugged Lake Superior shoreline and birdsong; Georgian Bay’s windswept archipelago; or Gros Morne’s sea stacks and unique geological history, Wave Sound provides us with the natural soundtrack we may have missed before, the one that was there all along.
Kathleen Ritter, Wave Sound, LandMarks2017/Repères2017
Photo credit: Kyra Kordoski / LandMarks2017/Repères2017
Belmore’s sculptures for LandMarks 2017/Repères 2017, Wave Sound, encourage visitors to actually pause and listen to the natural sounds of the land. The four sculptures, situated in Banff National Park (AB), Pukaskwa National Park (ON), Georgian Bay Islands National Park (ON), and Gros Morne National Park (NL), vary in shape, responding and conforming to each natural site. Each sculpture amplifies the living sounds that are particular to the location. Each sculpture, in its own way, encourages us to hear and consider the land and our relationship to the land. Whether it’s the Rocky Mountains of Banff with its ancient forests, running rivers and meadowland; Pukaskwa’s rugged Lake Superior shoreline and birdsong; Georgian Bay’s windswept archipelago; or Gros Morne’s sea stacks and unique geological history, Wave Sound provides us with the natural soundtrack we may have missed before, the one that was there all along.
Kathleen Ritter, Wave Sound, LandMarks2017/Repères2017
Photo credit: Kyra Kordoski / LandMarks2017/Repères2017
Torch
2014 / Photograph
Torch, by the Indigenous Canadian artist Rebecca, addresses the implications of colonialism as forced displacement of Indigenous peoples. The arm of Liberty, bound by the Stars and Stripes, is inverted and holds uprooted long black hair. This image connects liberty with discipline in the inverted bound arm, and replaces the torch of enlightenment with the darkness of uprooted hair.
John Potts, The Theme of Displacement in Contemporary Art, E-rea Revue électronique d’études sur le monde anglophone, 2018
Photo credit: Henri Robideau
Torch, by the Indigenous Canadian artist Rebecca, addresses the implications of colonialism as forced displacement of Indigenous peoples. The arm of Liberty, bound by the Stars and Stripes, is inverted and holds uprooted long black hair. This image connects liberty with discipline in the inverted bound arm, and replaces the torch of enlightenment with the darkness of uprooted hair.
John Potts, The Theme of Displacement in Contemporary Art, E-rea Revue électronique d’études sur le monde anglophone, 2018
Photo credit: Henri Robideau
sister
2010 / Audain Gallery, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC / Photograph
sister was a site-specific work installed in the Audain Gallery at Simon Fraser University. The work was intended to be seen by participants of the February 14, 2010 Annual Women’s Memorial March for missing and murdered Indigenous women. sister faced Hastings Street in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
Photo credit: Henri Robideau, Kevin Schmidt / SFU Galleries (installation view)
sister was a site-specific work installed in the Audain Gallery at Simon Fraser University. The work was intended to be seen by participants of the February 14, 2010 Annual Women’s Memorial March for missing and murdered Indigenous women. sister faced Hastings Street in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
Photo credit: Henri Robideau, Kevin Schmidt / SFU Galleries (installation view)
Rising to the Occasion (Vancouver Art Gallery)
2008 / Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC, Canada / Solo Exhibition
Through powerful images that implicate the body, performances that address history and memory, and gestures that evoke a sense of place, Rebecca Belmore is known for creating multi-disciplinary works that reveal a long-standing commitment to the politics of identity and representation.
Daina Augaitis, Kathleen Ritter eds., Rebecca Belmore: Rising to the Occasion, Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada, 2008
Photo credit: Vancouver Art Gallery
Through powerful images that implicate the body, performances that address history and memory, and gestures that evoke a sense of place, Rebecca Belmore is known for creating multi-disciplinary works that reveal a long-standing commitment to the politics of identity and representation.
Daina Augaitis, Kathleen Ritter eds., Rebecca Belmore: Rising to the Occasion, Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada, 2008
Photo credit: Vancouver Art Gallery
Oryza
2015 / Echigo-Tsumari Triennale, Kotsunagi, Japan / Installation / Community project
There is an 800-year-old cedar tree in the Kotsunagi village. Eight hundred shirts were donated by the surrounding communities. The sleeves of each shirt were sewn by hand and filled with local soil to become a container for the land. They were used to create a field of sleeves with three figures facing in the direction of the cedar tree. The shirt represents the body of the worker, the rice-farmer and the soil is the land that they have worked for generations.
Photo credit: Gentaro Ishizuka / Echigo-Tsumari Triennale, Rebecca Belmore
There is an 800-year-old cedar tree in the Kotsunagi village. Eight hundred shirts were donated by the surrounding communities. The sleeves of each shirt were sewn by hand and filled with local soil to become a container for the land. They were used to create a field of sleeves with three figures facing in the direction of the cedar tree. The shirt represents the body of the worker, the rice-farmer and the soil is the land that they have worked for generations.
Photo credit: Gentaro Ishizuka / Echigo-Tsumari Triennale, Rebecca Belmore