Caution: Indigenous artist at work

Michipicoten First Nation artist Rolande Souliere has lived in Australia with her Australian husband and children since the 1990s.
Michipicoten First Nation artist Rolande Souliere has lived in Australia with her Australian husband and children since the 1990s.

By Rick Garrick

THUNDER BAY – The caution tape used by Michipicoten artist Rolande Souliere in her current nationally-touring exhibit has several meanings.

“In 1994 in the Temagami case, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that a First Nation cannot register cautions on the land title to prevent the sale of land and this is the reason why I use caution tape in my installation,” Souliere says, noting her community had also registered cautions on property under a land claim, which was settled with Canada for $58.8 million in 2008. “In addition, in fixing the tape, rather than it being temporarily suspended between different points as in its ordinary usage, I mark the gallery space in a gesture that speaks of reclamation, demarcating lines that cannot be successively drawn and redrawn. It emphasizes how the perception of boundaries shift according to the perspective.”

Now based in Australia, Souliere has two works — Frequent Stopping I and II — on display in the “Beat Nation: Art, Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture” on exhibit in Regina until Sept.7.

Organized and toured by the Vancouver Art Gallery, “Beat Nation” is a collection of painting, sculpture, installation, performance and video by 28 artists from across North America. It has already been presented in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Halifax and Kamloops.

“People loved the exhibition, they really were quite surprised at how contemporary the works (are),” Souliere says. “It opened the eyes of many viewers to a different aspect of our culture, that we are no longer confined to the museum in closed cabinets, so to speak.”

Frequent Stopping II was inspired by a road trip Souliere took with her mother and sister between Vancouver and Seattle, Washington.

“I was impressed that there were road signs acknowledging the reservations along the way,” Souliere says. “I thought: ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to replace the words with an abstract design of First Nation patterns as a visual means for reclamation of Indigenous land.’”

Souliere says people have enjoyed the diversity of her work in the exhibition.

“In my artist’s talks people commented on how they enjoyed my use of the materiality of the tape and the story behind it. They also thought it was an interesting take on the modernist grid and others loved the pulsating and complex patterning of the tape.”

Souliere earned her masters in visual arts from the Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney in 2006 and is currently working on her doctorate.

“At present I am working on a social art project titled The Collage of Indigenization, which is a word play on a 1960s event titled the Collage of Indignation where 300 artists as part of the Angry Arts week made collages against the Vietnam War. I, on the other hand, invite the audience to make a collage on what it means to be Indigenous.

“So far, I have been conducting collage workshops with remote Australian Aboriginal communities where they learn the technique and also contribute to my project. At present I have over 100 collages.”