PUBLIC ART
Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas
"Yahgulanaas became a full-time artist after many decades working in the Haida Nation's successful campaign to protect its biocultural diversity; however, he began to play as an artist much earlier. As the descendant of iconic artists Isabella Edenshaw, Charles Edenshaw and Delores Churchill, his early training was under exceptional creators and master carvers of talented lineage. It wasn't until the late 1990s after an exposure to Chinese brush techniques, under the tutelage of Cantonese master Cai Ben Kwon, that he consciously began to merge Haida and Asian artistic influences into his self-taught practice, and innovated the art form called "Haida Manga."
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Source & complete bio: http://mny.ca/en/biography
Here, Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas discusses the role and purpose of public art as well as this particular piece at the Vancouver International Airport.
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More on this piece (photos & text):
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More of his public art:
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Dennis Oppenheim
This piece cause so much controvercy that it was removed.
Oppenheim is not an indigenous artist; however, this piece is relevant and provocative for discussions on residential schools and colonization.
Title: Device to Root Out Evil
"That piece, initially called Church, was proposed to the Public Art Fund in the city of New York to be built last year on Church Street, where I live. The director thought it was too controversial, and felt it would stimulate a lot of negative reaction from the Church and the religious population. I then changed the title to "Device to Root out Evil", to sidestep unwanted focus on ambient content. It's a very simple gesture that's made here, simply turning something upside-down. One is always looking for a basic gesture in sculpture, economy of gesture: it is the simplest, most direct means to a work. Turning something upside-down elicits a reversal of content and pointing a steeple into the ground directs it to hell as opposed to heaven."
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From interview with Oppenheim:
https://www.sculpture.org/documents/scmag97/oppenh/sm-oppen.shtml
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Oppenheim's Official Website:
CBC Article:
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Vancouver Sun, opinion piece:
https://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/upside-down-church-provokes-great-debate
7 Indigenous Artists
Suspended from a Vancouver Bridge in Protest
Protest as art.
Article with Images:
These 7 Indigenous artists’ designs flew in the path of tar sands tanker traffic
by Greenpeace Canada
4 July, 2018
