Yu-Sheng Chiu

Taiwanese photographic artist living and working in Ottawa, Canada.

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Drum!

For the last post (for now), I am sharing a bit about this 19th century frame drum I saw on the Metropolitan Museum's website for its sophisticated construction and design, especially with the figure, outlined in red with human head and bird-like body staring back at us with a grin. It is made with raw cow hide and wood with a 44.5 cm diameter.

The Drum Dance, also known as the Dream Dance, did not exist as part of traditional precontact Native cultures in the Great Lakes region until the 19th century. Originated among Plains tribes, it was introduced to the Minnesota Ojibwe by the Sioux, who later passed it to the Wisconsin Ojibwe in the 1870s. The ceremony centered on sacred drums made from wooden washtubs, raised on stakes, covered with calf hide, and richly decorated with symbolic designs. Each drum had its own group of members who held specific roles, such as speaker, singer, drum beater, pipe tender, and drumhead heater, and were organized around the dance ring. It has become a essential part of milestone events like marriage, divorce and the end of mourning and is now practiced more often as a social gathering along prayers to good health, prosperity and friendship.

Sources: "Religious and Ceremonial Life". Great Lakes Traditional and Modern. Milwaukee Public Museum. https://www.mpm.edu/index.php/educators/wirp/great-lakes-traditional-culture/religious-ceremonial-life

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Taking a look into birchbark scraping!

I wrote about birchbark biting in an earlier post and thought it would be interesting to also look into birch scraping, another method of utilizing birch barks. Instead of using thinner spring barks with lighter colours, bark scraping is usually done on birchbark harvested in the fall or winter time which appears to have a dark orange or red colour on the outer part. It would be scraped away with a tool to reveal the lighter layer underneath to create the design, and can also be done other way around if spring barks are being used. Animals, floral and geometric motifs are often the subject matters and are realised with contrast, and they can be found on containers, cookware, and canoes.

Sources:

Kata, Sonia. “Embellishing birchbark: All bark, and some bite” McCord Museum Montreal. May 26th, 2022. https://www.musee-mccord-stewart.ca/en/blog/embellishing-birchbark/

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One of my favourite things of learning about Indigenous cultures is the emphasis on nature and how animals and mythological creatures are respected and celebrated through art such as the Inuit soapstone sculptures that I've seen in recent years. So when I came across the images of Mishipeshu in class, I was delighted to find out more.

This pictograph one of the many on Agawa rock and is said to be depicting Mishipeshu, also know as the Great Lynx and It is an Ojibwe water creature affiliated with the Algonquin, Ottawa, Menominee, Shawnee, and Cree tribes. It has many other names, such as Mishibizhiw, Messibizi, Michipichi, Michipichik, Msipessi, Missibizi, Michi-Pichoux, Gichi-anami'e-bizhiw, Nampeshiu, and Nambiza. It dwells in the depth of Lake Superior and spends its time by guarding copper on Michipicoten Island, and generating powerful storms as well as causing death and misfortune for those who disturb its peace by causing waves or breaking ice to kill humans by drowning. These rust-toned artworks were set in stone by Ojibway spiritual leaders on vision quests 150-400 years, and it is a important place for the people to finding direction. Visitors are often encouraged to leave tobacco as offerings in exchange of a safe return from the site.

Sources:

Gollner, Adam. “Coming Face to Face with the Underwater Panther”, April 3rd, 2019. The Walrus. https://thewalrus.ca/coming-face-to-face-with-the-underwater-panther/ Osborne, Lindi. "Meet Mishipeshu, the underwater panther in Lake Superior". Great Lakes Guide. October 16th, 2020. https://greatlakes.guide/ideas/meet-mishipeshu-the-underwater-panther-in-lake-superior

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Bandolier Bags

It is important to remember that the bandoliers that are familiar to most is already an 18-19th century design, and the Ojibwe has been making bags and pouches in different sizes way before the European arrival to North America. They were usually made of buckskin into organic shapes and decorated with materials such as fur, quills and moose hair. While small, plain leather pouches were for carrying tools, decorated bags are for storing sacred objects, and they signify familial wealth and prestige, which was a common practice among Ojibwe and other Indigenous people.[1] As of 1675, beads became available to Ojibwe artists on the east of the Great Lake through French fur trade, and the beads then were small white beads that are known as “seed beads”, and the variety of these beads expanded since the late eighteenth century as larger white beads and opaque coloured beads were introduced to the market, followed by their variants that are made translucent and metallic; in mid-nineteenth century North Wisconsin, beads were also issued as part of government annuity. It is understood that bandolier bag was adapted from the shoulder bags or bullet pouches that British soldiers wore in the mid-eighteenth century.

While looking up examples of bandolier bags from the nineteenth century, I came across this 1890s bandolier bag at Hood Museum of Art and was immediately captivated. Made in White Earth Reservation by women from Ojibwe/Chippewa, it has lively foliated designs beaded in at least eleven colours—pink, mauve, sage green, forest green, cobalt blue, baby blue, yellow, mustard, lavender purple… throughout the cotton cloth surface, including a block of black velveteen separates the bottom of the bag as the bag strap which is adorned with olive green trimming, and strings of beads dangle at the bottom of the bag. It sits at 95x32.5 cm and was likely a functional piece that was worn during ceremonies once upon the time. It is a beautifully made work that reflects the importance of nature to Anishinaabe.[1]

Notably though, the shift from geometric to organic designs only happened after the 1870s when the French floral tradition was likely brought to the Great Lake via trade and encounters with wives of government and military officials and taught to girls at Catholic or Protestant mission schools along with other European embroidery techniques as parts of the post-treaty, reservation developing era. Before that, bandolier makers created geometric without making a pattern prior, while also producing floral designs can be referenced from a “library” of bead designs, often cut or bitten out of birch bark as well as collections of flowers and leaves.[2]

[1] Hood Museum, Anishinaabe Bandolier Bags.

[2] Cotherman, p31.

[1] Cotherman, Steve. “Art Traditions of the Anishinaabe”. 2010. p28.

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Barry Ace's Beaded& Digital Blings

Moving forward to the early 2010s, Odawa artist Barry Ace dives into the Anishinaabe cosmology by reimaging bandolier bags by incorporating modern materials such as electrical resistors and copper with traditional beadworks as part of his exploration in mixed media. Ace is an artist known for responding to the impact of the digital age and how it can “transform and infuses Anishnaabeg culture with new technologies and new ways of communicating.” From 2012-2023 made a series of digital blings that are hair ties, earrings, brooches and bead wrapped rope with medallions. He successfully uses electrical components to create Great Lake-styled floral motifs.

"...I deliberately push the boundaries of cultural art practices such as beadwork by transforming antiquated electronic e-waste, primarily capacitors, resistors, and light-emitting diodes to create new and complex floral motifs that mirror traditional Anishinaabeg style glass beadwork. Through an up-cycling of e-waste, I carefully yet respectfully negotiate the tenuous line of cultural continuity and strive to maintain a distinct Anishinaabeg aesthetic as an intentional response to the advance of technological colonization of the digital age.”- Barry Ace (2023)

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Carl Beam's monumental collages

After looking at Norval Morisseau and the Woodland School's colourful, stylistic paintings honouring traditions, Carl Beam's works goes towards a total different direction of criticizing the residential system that the Canadian government forced onto the Indigenous people, as well as the skewed historical narratives that has done severe harm that still needs to be amended till this day. His 1984 painting Exorcism, serves as a visual protest of the dodgy attitude of the authority regarding Indigenous welfare and social issues.

Support surface is painted plywood, painted historic Ojibwe warrior facing right, phototransfer of Indigenous people in modern clothing, bird painted on a cardboard square, a couple signs prohibiting trespassing, another cardboard square with painted silhouettes with their arms up and red palm prints in the corner on the top right; but they were segregated from the viewers with barb wires placed horizontally. It is fascinating how Beam creates depth of field with collages in the pictorial and contextual sense. Looking at this work from left to right, a clear timeline is presented on how residential schools robbed Indigenous people from their families, traditions, and integrity as human. The colour palette resembles blood—fresh and oxidized.

Beam had always produced works that reject public's expectation of Indigenous artists. He even went up a notch by introducing performance elements at the opening for his exhibition Altered Ego at Thunder Bay Gallery in 1984 by inviting guests to throw hatchets onto the works, and had archer Dennis Chibnall shoot nine broad-head arrows into the work.

"These actions signalled the destruction of institutionalized barriers prohibiting people’s direct interaction with art. While the subject matter merged the past and present using text and images, people’s participation affecting the work merged art and action. Exorcism signals the way in which destruction can bring about renewal.”- Thunday Bay Art Gallery, 2019

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Before Norval Morisseau Became a Household Name

I have visited the National Gallery of Canada a couple times this fall (perks of living in Ottawa), and saw Norval Morisseau's 1980 painting, Artist and Shaman Between Two Worlds in person for the first time. Painting with acrylic on a 175X282cm canvas, this painting is greatly impactful to communicate his idea of art as a shamanistic practice in the modern Canadian context, inspired by his familial ties to shamanism and his upbringing in the Anishinaabe lifestyle.

Separating the canvas horizontally into two parts, Marisseau placed all his figures on the bottom half with the mint green background facing to the left, and a large bird open its wings that occupy the top of the canvas painted in hot pink while sitting on top of a person's head, who is situated in the middle of the canvas and is in the foreground, appearing much larger than all the other human figures. Among them, animals like fish and birds, as well as snakes are merged with the large bird's wings float lively against the gravity. Morisseau's use of vibrant colours, drip technique and fluid black contouring produces a dream-like ambience that introduces himself as the intermediary between the mortal and spiritual worlds as the division of the canvas can also be read as water and earth that pays homages to the abundance of the earth as other organic shapes resemble cells. With this approach that is recognized as parts of the foundation of Woodland style, Morisseau asserted his primordiality and forever changing the trajectory of Indigenous artists in the scenes of Canadian fine arts.

Norval Morriseau was a self-taught Anishinaabe artist who identified as Ojibwe. He was born in 1931 and learned about shamanism and Catholicism while staying with his paternal grandparents. He withdrawn from school to listen and learn from the elders, or he would be drawing alone. His interest in making art to visualize his knowledge about his culture started early on but was always discouraged by the community as it is forbidden to share ceremonial knowledge. Morisseau hunted and fished for a living as well as taking on pulpwood cutting and highway construction jobs; he adopted alcoholism into his lifestyle at the same time. Morisseau moved to Red Lake with his wife, Harriet Kakegamic in 1958 for a job at the gold mine and have been painting. One of his first collectors was the artist couple Esther and Joseph Weinstein. Selwyn Dewdney was another important figure who advocated for Morisseau’s work to be included in the National Art Gallery of Canada. His work was finally purchased in the 2000s and was the first non-Inuit Indigenous Artist to hold a retrospective at the National Gallery in 2006.

Sources: Robertson, Carmen. “Norval Morisseau: Life and Work” Significance and Critical Issue. Art Canada Institute. 2016.

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Being a fashion enthusiast myself, I think that clothing is a very powerful medium that provides authentic narrative of a community’s history and their relationship with the natural and cultural environment through the materiality. So when I came across this late eighteenth century Anishinaabeg attire on the website of National Museum of American Art, its sophisticated design and detail-driven construction immediately drew my interests to learn about each garment, what encouraged the choice of such assemblage, and how it ended in a museum.

Acquired by Andrew Foster in the 1790s during his stationing at Michilimackinac, Michigan, it was likely a gift from the Anishinaabe during some sort of European-Native alliances, according to texts about this piece by Ruth B. Phillips and Michael Witgen (Ojibwe). It was made with a variety of materials that are familiar by the Indigenous people and the European trade. This attire consists of a headdress made of chainmail-like base and feather adornment, a drop-shoulder jacket made with structure floral fabric with the chest covered with many small silver hoops matched by a pair of red fabric pants with side slits, a paired of moccasins with puckered toe, and quillwork bands wrapped around the waist and knees, as well we the moccasins. This intricate outfit was said to be very similar to the one presented to Lieutenant John Caldwell in 1780, meaning that it was something to be worn by leaders. In the occasion of bringing out these attires, Anishinaabe peoples recognized meyaagizid and inawemaagen, which means foreigner and relative, so by accepting their gift, the officers would have recognized his alliance with the Anishinaabeg while his political importance is also asserted in this community.

Source: Phillips, Ruth B, Witgen, Michael. “Anishinaabe Outfit Collected by Andrew Foster”. Art and History in the Collections of the National Museum of the American Indian.

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Before and Beyond Colonization-- Birchbark Biting or mazinashkwemaganjigan

I’ve recently learned about birchbark biting or mazinashkwemaganjigan, an Anishinaabeg practice that has been around for a thousands of years that is done by biting into the barks from paper birch trees with one’s teeth to create designs, and makers envision the designs in their head[1] Every piece is unique, other than the mental labour of replicating the same patterns, and though the harvests in spring has thinner barks that are easier to work with while retaining better, there are works that are made on darker, reddish barks harvested in winter time due to the higher level of concentrations of tannins and phenolic acid, according to Sonia Kata, conservation curator of McCord Museum in Montreal. While birch bark is used for making designs, its water resistance and lightness allows this material to be made into cooking vessels containers and canoes; other parts of the tree would also be utilized-- wood for furniture and tools and sap to consume fresh or make into syrup[2].

Cree artist Pat Bruderer aka Halfmoon Woman explains that it traditionally used for ceremonial documentation and beadwork patterns with references from symbolic and naturalistic motif in mind, and the process is greatly calculated and challenges the maker’s spatial sense and mathematic. Half Moon Woman has been practicing for over 30 years[1], and she goes through 13 stages to finish a piece after visualizing what she wants to make; this process was taught to her by family members, and she has been doing workshops for school children in recently years as there are not many active birchbark biting artists in the world. I am going to show examples from the early 20th century and some by Halfmoon Woman so we can see how this art form is preserved and transformed in the contemporary lens.

While birch bark is used for making designs, its water resistance and lightness allows this material to be made into cooking vessels containers and canoes; other parts of the tree would also be utilized-- wood for furniture and tools and sap to consume fresh or make into syrup. The principle of finding purposes in all parts of the tree once again reflect the Indigenous gratitude towards nature.

[1] Halfmoon Women. "Birchbark Biting] YouTube video. 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7Z9cUIT23w&t=179s [2] Kata, Sonia, “Embellishing birchbark: All bark, and some bite” McCord Museum Montreal. May 26th, 2022. https://www.musee-mccord-stewart.ca/en/blog/embellishing-birchbark/

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Learning about Anishinaabeg art and stories for my ART3354 final!

I'm having a really fun time learning about Anishnaabeg art and tradition since I never really had the chance to do so. As a Taiwanese who still struggles with identity politics due to the cultural gentrification from the 38-year-long militia period, though in a different context, it is important to reference how other once-colonized people around the world preserve and honour their stories and traditions without being othered or perceived in stereotypes.

Anishnaabe refer to all the nations that speak Anishnaabemowin and share the similar traditions. They consist of Algonquin, Nipissing, Missisaugas, Potawatomi, Odawa, Chippewa (Ojibwa), Oji-Cree, and Chippewa (Saulteaux)[1] and they have been long established on Turtle Island known as present-day North American continent as of 1492. As parts of Woodland First Nations, the Anishinaabe were made up of many independent groups with their own hunting territory and usually had fewer than 400 people; they were gifted hunters and trappers who were incredibly knowledgeable about the habitats and seasonal migrations of the animals, and the greatest and bravest hunter among each groups became the leader.[2]

The Anishnaabe people were also gifted a belief known as the “Seven Grandfather Teachings”—and they are ancient values that guide how people think, act, and relate to others. In the story, a messenger discovers the Neshnabék (self-given name of the Potawatomi people) living negatively, so a child is chosen to be taught by the Seven Grandfathers the lessons of Love, Respect, Bravery, Truth, Honesty, Humility, and Wisdom. These teachings must be used simultaneously, as they are all interconnected. Each person is responsible for applying them sincerely in their own life while trusting the Creator [3]. Therefore, people hold gratitude towards everything in their environment, individually and collectively, and this tendency also reflects in songs, dances, festivals and ceremonies. And particularly, a Woodland First Nation hunter would sing to an animal before it dies, thanking it for providing food for he and his family.

Despite having exercised mature sovereignty for eternity, the Anishinaabe people along with other Indigenous nations went through unthinkable horror and suffering since 1492, notably the 1640 Beaver War, Treaty Years through 1776-1781, Assimilation and Vortex of Historic Trauma from 1871-1928 and the 1956 Relocation Act. The colonial damages were addressed with the 1968 American Indian Movement, followed by lots of resistant works in literature and arts to this day. And I'm going to look into a couple art works in the following posts.

[1] American Indian Resource Center. “Gaa-izhiwebakin Anishinaabewakiing”. [2]Government of Canada. “Social Organization: First Nations in Canada”. [3] “Seven Grandfather Teachings”, Waséyabek.

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Ghost of Her Sorrow, 2024.

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It still hits me at the least expected moments.

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Imported Goods, 2023.

A set of photographs I made in the end of 2023 out of survival mode to very honest. I have just restored my study permit two weeks before Christmas break started and needed to produce something quickly. I chose bananas as my subjects as they are one of the fruits that bear cultural and economic significance to Taiwanese. To look at these as self-portraits is probably more appropriate than ever, though I haven't found the words for it because I'm currently behind on other assignments. But I've been thinking about how "shelf-life" is being interpreted when we discuss women's physical youth as well as the fact that banana as a tropical fruit that is often taken for granted, which mirrors the position that our women in the homeland have been put into as well as the ones in the diaspora.

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Yoshitaka Amano.

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Self-portrait, 2023. From my series In Bed with My Dreams and Delusions.

View the series here: https://www.yushengchiu.com/in-bed-with-my-dreams-and-delusions-2023