ROBERT HOULE LOOKING FOR THE SHAMAN CONTENTS INTRODUCTION by Carla Garnet ARTIST STATEMENT by Robert Houle ROBERT HOULE SELECTED WORKS A MOVEMENT TOWARDS SHAMAN by Elwood Jimmy INSTALL IMAGES PARTICIPANT BIOS LIST OF WORKS ABOUT THE JOHN B. AIRD GALLERY ROBERT HOULE CURRICULUM VITAE (LONG) PAMPHLET DESIGN BY ERIN STORUS INTRODUCTION BY CARLA GARNET The John B. Aird Gallery will present a reflects the artist's search for the shaman solo survey show of Robert Houle's within. The works included are united by artwork, titled Looking for the Shaman, their eXploration of the power of from June 12 to July 6, 2018. dreaming, a process by which the dreamer becomes familiar with their own Now in his seventh decade, Robert Houle symbolic unconscious terrain. Through is a seminal Canadian artist whose work these works, Houle explores the role that engages deeply with contemporary the shaman plays as healer and discourse, using strategies of interpreter of the spirit world. deconstruction and involving with the politics of recognition and disappearance The narrative of the Looking for the as a form of reframing. As a member of Shaman installation hinges not only upon Saulteaux First Nation, Houle has been an a lifetime of traversing a physical important champion for retaining and geography of streams, rivers, and lakes defining First Nations identity in Canada, that circumnavigate Canada’s northern with work exploring the role his language, coniferous and birch forests, marked by culture, and history play in defining his long, harsh winters and short, mosquito- response to cultural and institutional infested summers, but also upon histories. His practice draws on Western traversing the terrain of history, art conventions to tackle lingering extending the threads of the colonial past aspects of colonization and its into the present and looking toward the postcolonial aftermath, while remaining future. The figure of the shaman is deeply informed by the spiritual concepts central for Houle because shamans, of respect and sharing that guide his life, understood to be capable of separating offering a mediated space for gallery their spirits from their bodies and thus visitors to experience these concepts. able to intercede in and control the forces of nature, have exceptional power Looking for the Shaman is self directed by to act on behalf of the community. the artist, with Aird Gallery director and Having risen above the human condition, curator Carla Garnet acting as the the shaman is not bound by the flow of project's facilitator and organizer. The history. multimedia section of the eXhibition Looking for the Shaman includes three Anishinabe women are traditionally ergonomic-scale oil on canvas portraits from recognized as water protectors, and the Houle’s black-and-white Shaman Dream in women of Idle No More continue to fulfill Colour series and three from his blue and this essential role. Like the shaman, the rose Mississauga Portraits series. The water protector performs an important Mississauga Portraits depict Maungwudaus community function, their deep knowledge and his second wife, Hannah, members of of the earth’s water and waterways making the Mississauga dance troupe that them a powerful conduit of spiritualism and performed for kings and queens of France healing. and Belgium at Saint Cloud, just outside of Paris, in the mid-1800’s. These paintings are The works included in Looking for the informed by a lifetime of dreaming, drawing, Shaman, which span the last decade, are and memory, linking these processes to the united by the connections Houle draws “out-of-body” and shape-shifting experiences between the terrain of dreams and the of the shaman. symbolic unconscious and the actual historical and geographic terrain of First The eXhibition also includes two works from Nations people. By focusing on the shaman, a Houle’s ongoing parfleche series (a parfleche, potent figure of mediation and healing, which literally translates from the French as Houle transforms the gallery into a mediated “defends against arrows,” is a carrying case space for viewers to explore this connectivity traditionally made of buffalo hide, folded through the lens of Indigenous spirituality. over into a pouch to carry objects, and is most often painted with abstract imagery To enrich the Looking for the Shaman intended as a map of the local landscape), exhibition, the Aird Gallery presents audience along with two installations that include engagement programming in the form of a powerful traditional objects from Houle’s set of cinq à sept talks featuring: Robert personal collection, and a suite of new Houle, Shirley Madill, Elwood Jimmy and spiritual water protector works on Mylar. TDSB Principal of Aboriginal Education Tanya These new drawings and paintings are Senk. The gallery has also commissioned a inspired by the growing destruction of the new essay on Houle’s work by Jimmy, which environment from oil spills and pipelines, will be featured in an online and print now referred to by the Idle No More publication alongside an artist statement by movement as “black snakes,” referencing a Houle. Lakota prophecy about a black snake that, when it goes underground, will bring about environmental destruction. ARTIST STATEMENT BY ROBERT HOULE This exhibition is about looking back, rationalism. It should be noted that as earth- mequándumoowin, which means memory in centered people, we believe that animals my maternal language, SaulteauX. The title, are relatives much like the seven “Looking for the Shaman” is based on a grandfathers with their teachings: miXed-media self-portrait in which my right eagle/love, wolf/humility, beaver/wisdom, hand points to a blue area, my spirit colour. bear/courage, turtle/truth, buffalo/respect Also included in the show are works created and sabe/honesty. between 2009 and 2018 that feature imagery related to shamanism which has Moreover, the weather, the atmosphere of always played an important role in healing, a place and time, can be the inspiration and naming and spiritual leadership that sanction for a spirit name. Spring is generally influences our comportment in both public heralded by the arrival of young and personal spaces. thunderbirds that create havoc when their lightening pierces the dark clouds. As These drawings, paintings and installations children our mother would offer tobacco to are about eXperiences that shaped my life appease them. These rituals play an growing up in my community of Sandy Bay important role in keeping our relationship First Nation in southern Manitoba. with nature alive and meaningful. The Assembled together they become a thunderers and their helpers make their mnemonic device that maps what the body presence known by the different sounds remembers through the senses and dreams. they create during a storm. Very often this The more recent works on mylar and canvas is the descriptive source for spirit names for reflect recent investigations into current people’s guidance and protection. As an environmental issues of water protection. example, mine is Blue Thunder, a name used primarily during prayer, ritual and My perspective clearly signifies an ceremony. epistemological difference from Judeo- Christian modernity. As an Anishnabe, ProXimity to this spiritual and cultural memory is a phenomena eXperienced significance is what frames this work. through magic and reality, the intersection Nonetheless, colonization, with its of shamanism and mythology rather than conflicting distractions of assimilation and appropriation is still very much a work in causing destabilization of the earth. Nebé, progress in view of the findings and water, sustains life. A ritual learned while recommendations of the Truth and growing up in Sandy Bay involved walking Reconciliation Commission. Its inquiry into along the shore of Lake Manitoba after the cultural genocidal apparatus of the church. If accompanied by my brothers, not Residential School System is very much an a word was spoken. The long, silent walk on-going self-eXamination of the damage was considered helpful in releasing trauma done to our earth-centred spirituality. during difficult times. Today, as everyone is aware, water is under threat everywhere. The Sundance and Potlatch were outlawed The Dakota have given the name blacksnake by Parliament between 1885 and 1951. to the network of pipelines that transverse As a teenager, a stern lecture from a priest Turtle Island in all four directions. about the sin of worshipping false gods at the Sundance was long a source of As an abstraction, meditation as a thought humiliation and conflict. Today, these two process can reveal a path to a world of spiritual traditions and calendars, winter and colour and images where the shaman travels summer solstices, are an inspiration. the path of the Morningstar: rising with the Growing up with both narratives was sun at dawn and perhaps singing at dusk. encouraged by our parents and medicine Traditionally, this is considered as spending people allowing us to witness what our the entire day with the Creator. Abstraction ancestors had left for us in order to lead a in painting can also be meditative. It can good life. Traditional knowledge includes intuitively expose a level of vulnerability shape shifting, conjuring, transforming, during the creative process. Paintings done healing and naming which can leave a during this personal journey of events have shaman vulnerable. They intercede with helped shape my spiritual life and given me mythological guardians as well as ancestors freedom to create. Some of the meditative on behalf of those who seek their assistance. shamans in the paintings appear as androgynous figures, some holding an eagle Water, the symbol of life in Anishnabe feather and one in particular that is mythology is connected to our seemingly holding a talkingstick, an ancient grandmothers, mothers, sisters and wives. and powerful object designating who has Idle No More was founded by women in the right to speak.