Buffalo Boy: Then and Now

Prancing through the crowd at Corralling Art: Curatorial Practice in the Prairies and Beyond in Saskatoon (2007), brandishing his whip and shaking his tailfeather, Adrian Stimson's anti-colonial, gender-bending persona, Buffalo Boy, a parody of Buffalo Bill, resurrects the turn-of-the-century staged frontier spectacles well known from Wild West traveling shows. Stimson notes that Buffalo Boy is a trickster character. Remixing and re-signifying the Master Narrative of colonial history, Stimson's Buffalo Boy confronts contemporary structures of power through a neo-trickster approach, reawakening the indigenous figure of play associated with strategies of humor and subversion. Crossing the boundaries of colonialism, racism, hybridity, sexuality, nationality, politics and religion, Buffalo Boy's stature resembled that of local statues on the parade route, positioning him as an equal amid a legacy of colonial history while also challenging a mainstream conservative and mainly white gay community with questions of visibility, cultural differences and paradigms of absence and presence

Unsettling Canadian heritage: Decolonial aesthetics in Canadian video and performance art

Issues of settler colonialism in Canada are prominent in public discourse in the wake of the 2015 findings by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. These histories, rooted in legacies of cultural genocide and trauma, disrupt national mythologies of the Canadian state as benevolent and inclusive. Grappling with this moment of reconciliation-and the resistance and resentment entangled in this process-we suggest contemporary artists are leading the way in critically examining these dynamics. In this article we investigate decolonialism as an aesthetic strategy. Focusing on how decolonial aesthetics engages with the discourse of Canadian heritage, we examine the work of contemporary artists Leah Decter, Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyen, and Caroline Monnet. These artists, all working with archives, communities, and histories located geographically or conceptually at the peripheries of Canada, employ diverse media to engage with heritage objects, concepts, and events, to question settler colonialism in the public realm. Through our analysis of their work, we argue for the ways in which their projects unsettle dominant national histories. We contend that Decter's, Hoàng Nguyen's, and Monnet's decolonial aesthetics mobilize heritage to unpack the complexities of the Canadian state

More Caught in the Act : An Anthology of Performance Art by Canadian Women

"The long-awaited second volume, More Caught in the Act: an anthology of performance art by Canadian women is an indispensable compendium of original research and writing on, and images of, Canadian women in performance art covering work made from 1990 to 2010. Like the first volume, Caught in the Act: an anthology of performance art by Canadian women (2004), this book gives readers a first-hand glimpse into this vibrant and largely under recognized subject in contemporary Canadian art history. More Caught in the Act includes 29 comprehensive profiles of artists from across the country, along with five contextual essays that place current performance strategies by women within broader art historical and cultural contexts." -- Publisher's website

Narratives Unfolding : National Art Histories in an Unfinished World

"Somewhere between global and local, the nation still lingers as a concept. National art histories continue to be written - some for the first time - while innovative methods and practices redraw the boundaries of these imagined communities. Narratives Unfolding considers the mobility of ideas, transnationalism, and entangled histories in essays that define new ways to see national art in ever-changing nations. " -- Publisher's website

Àbadakone

" Produced in conjunction with the National Gallery of Canada exhibition Àbadakone | Continuous Fire | Feu continuel, this multifaceted publication features work by more than 70 contemporary Indigenous artists identifying with almost 40 Indigenous nations, ethnicities and tribal affiliations from 16 countries, including Canada. Tapping into the global pulse of Indigenous artistic production, Àbadakone builds upon themes of continuity, activation, and relatedness, exploring the creativity, concerns and vitality of Indigenous art from virtually every continent. " -- Publisher's website