Krista Belle Stewart is an artist and a member of the Upper Nicola Band of the Syilx/Okanagan Nation, currently based in Berlin. Her work with video, land, performance, photography, textiles, and sound unfolds over long periods of time, drawing out personal and political narratives.

In 2006, she traveled to the Karl May Museum in Radebeul, Germany, where she met with 'The Band of Broken Arrows' one of many groups of German citizens who call themselves 'Indianer' inspired by the fictional novels of author Karl May. Indianer dress up in costume and perform what they imagine to be a North American Indigenous lifestyle. Stewart documented her experience during this trip, but waited to further develop the project.

It has now been thirteen years since Stewart's initial meeting with this community. After returning to Germany as an artist-in-residence at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, she reconnected with the group of Indianer she met during her first visit. The number of people in the community has significantly dropped, almost by half. However, the culture of appropriation continues on. This summer, she was invited to participate in a large gathering of nearly 1000 Indianer from all over Europe. Enacting a kind of inverted anthropology, Stewart developed a new body of work revolving around these encounters for her solo exhibition at Nanaimo Art Gallery. While Indianer communities may seem at a distance, this exhibition can also be a point of reflection on the legacies of cultural inequality in British Columbia.

Considering what happens when cultural appropriation becomes tradition, Krista Belle Stewart's project is the third exhibition in a year in which Nanaimo Art Gallery asks the question: what are generations?

The exhibition is accompanied by an essay by Berlin based Canadian writer Mitch Speed.

Image courtesy of Krista Belle Stewart

---

Seraphine, Seraphine Screening and Artist Talk

Vancouver Island Conference Centre, 101 Gordon St., Nanaimo, Dodd Narrows Room A
Free | Everyone welcome
Register required, online or call 250.754.1750

Join artist Krista Belle Stewart for a screening of her video work Seraphine, Seraphine (2014), in which Stewart interweaves a 1967 CBC docu-drama about the first Aboriginal public health nurse in B.C. with excerpts from a personal testimony from the 2013 Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Both parts of this video feature the same person: the artist's mother, Seraphine Stewart. Contrasting the narrative constructed by our national broadcaster nearly 50 years ago with Seraphine's recent testimony as a residential school survivor, Krista Belle Stewart activates the dual role of the artist as both voice and witness. After the screening, Stewart will discuss Seraphine, Seraphine, and other projects.

 

Image: Krista Belle Stewart, Seraphine, Seraphine, Two-channel video installation, 2014

 

 

In an estuary, where freshwater and saltwater meet, materials accumulate faster than they can be carried away. The Nanaimo River Estuary supports life through biodiversity and nutrient cycles, serving as a resource and sanctuary for its inhabitants. Legacies of industrial and colonial land practices also significantly impact this environment. In this contested site, food, economy, waste, history, and memory settle together like sediment, only to be stirred back into suspension, creating opportunities for new understanding. 

 

The exhibition Estuary takes up the work of its namesake–materials and histories converge on the Gallery’s floors and walls. This repository of sculpture, textile, sound, poetry, and video shares personal stories and communal geographies. Estuary features hand-sewn tapestries rooted in recuperative labour, filmic tracings of Nanaimo’s disappeared Chinatowns, aural explorations of the estuarine environment, and other artworks that see an estuary as a place of flux and process. 

 

Considering the estuary and what generates and regenerates there, Estuary is the second exhibition in a year in which Nanaimo Art Gallery ask the question: what are generations?

Download under perfect blue million mile sky by Elisa Ferrari and John Brennan below:

https://soundcloud.com/user-927895033/under-perfect-blue-millipon-mile-sky/s-J1X04

Ethnobotanist Nancy Turner and elder Geraldine Manson (Snuneymuxw Nation) share the breadth of their extensive knowledge of native and invasive plants as they lead a walk on the Nanaimo River Estuary. Spend the morning with them, getting to know this special place, and the things that are sustained by it. 

 

 

Artist and curator, Tania Willard (Secwepemc Nation) and, artist and filmmaker, Steven Thomas Davies

(Snuneymuxw Nation) collaborated on an installation that explores the submerged perspectives of eelgrass
beds in estuarine ecosystems. On the last day of Estuary, join them for a special dialogue on site, where they will speak about their respective practices, and their collaboration for the exhibition.

 

 

Guy Ben-Ner, Justine A. Chambers, Joel Good and William Good, Tanya Lukin Linklater

 

The title for this exhibition was inspired by the working methods of father and son Snuneymuxw artists Joel Good and William Good, who carve together across from each other at the kitchen table almost every day. However, this practice of shared learning through direct connections across generations is central to all of the artworks in the exhibition. In addition to collaborative carvings by the Goods, Across the Table features a father and daughter who reenact Moby Dick in their kitchen, and families who dance across generations while sharing stories, music, and gestures.

 

Sharing artistic collaborations between mothers and sons and daughters and fathers and grandmothers, Across the Table is the first exhibition in a year in which Nanaimo Art Gallery asks the question: What are generations?