MMFA 2017: Nadia Myre

NADIA MYRE 

TOUT CE QUI RESTE – SCATTERED REMAINS

November 15, 2017 – May 27, 2018

This is the first solo survey exhibition of Nadia Myre, a Quebec Indigenous artist, at the Montreal Museum Of Fine Arts. It features the Canadian premiere of Code Switching, a series Myre produced during an artist residency at the Darling Foundry, sponsored by the MMFA, in 2016-2017. The exhibition includes some twenty works – photographs and sculptures – created between 2000 and 2017. It is part of Woman. Artist. Indigenous. season at the Museum, devoted to female Indigenous artists.

This is an imaginative presentation of several individual works by the artists. The way they are displayed together, a coherent whole is achieved and is perceived as a single artistic installation. As one walks within the exhibition room from one displayed object to the next, it is becomes obvious that what one sees are separate puzzle pieces of the same unified body of art that tells the story how the artist reconciles her reality, the reality of her native roots, the overpowering European stronghold that took over, and the modern multi-ethnic cultural fabric of the society within which she lives and creates. She uses elements not produced by the natives to express native motives and designs, thus recreating her own identity through the blending of all separate realities of her present life. For instance, the native ornamental piece in the photo at the very top of this article was made with ceramic pieces Myre found in the mud during a river Themes' low tide, a popular activity called mud-larking by the Londoners. These ceramic pieces were used in manufacturing pipes. A a remnant of one such pipe, also found by the artist, appears in the image above this paragraph.

About Nadia Myre

Nadia Myre is a member of the Algonquin First Nation of Kitigan Zibi Anishnabeg. In her works, she revisits official history and the political and social struggles of Indigenous peoples. She juxtaposes her personal experience with that of others, creating highly symbolic works that spark contemplation and reflection. She takes a participatory approach and tackles topics of identity, language, desire and memory. The works in the exhibition reflect on the encounter between Indigenous peoples and the Europeans.

Born in Montreal in 1974, Nadia Myre is a graduate of Camosun College, Victoria (1995), Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Vancouver (1997), and Concordia University (MFA, 2002). She received the Banff Centre for Arts Walter Phillips Gallery Indigenous Commission Award (2016), and the prestigious 2014 Sobey Art Award, for outstanding Canadian artists aged forty or under. In the past 15 years, her works have been presented and collected by museums in Canada and abroad, including the Musée d’art contemporain des Laurentides, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Art Gallery of Ontario, Mackenzie Art Gallery, Winnipeg Art Gallery, National Gallery of Canada, the National Museum of the American Indian (New York), Eiteljorg Museum (Indianapolis), the Compton Verney Art Gallery (GB), Fresnoy (France), and the Sydney Biennale in Australia.

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WOMAN. ARTIST. INDIGENOUS.

This fall, the MMFA is spotlighting female Indigenous artists with exhibitions and acquisitions of their works, as part of Woman. Artist. Indigenous. In addition to the exhibition of works by Nadia Myre, this cycle presents the work of Ontario photographer Meryl McMaster, with the exhibition IN-BETWEEN WORLDS (until December 3, 2017), consisting of two photographic series entitled In-Between Worlds (2010-2015) and Wanderings (2015); artists Eruoma Awashish, Meky Ottawa and Jani Bellefleur-Kaltush, with their immersive installation KUSHAPETSHEKAN / KOSAPTCIKAN – A GLIMPSE INTO THE OTHER WORLD (until February 4, 2018), as well as recent acquisitions of works by Maria Hupfield and Rebecca Belmore. Woman. Artist. Indigenous. follows She Photographs (2016), which featured seventy works by thirty contemporary female photographers from Quebec and further afield, and Her Story Today (2015), which presented works by six contemporary Canadian female painters

For more information about the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts exhibitions and activities, visit the museum's website.

McCord 2016: Nadia Myre

Decolonial Gestures or Doing it Wrong?

Refaire le chemin

February 18 - May 29, 2016

The McCord Museum of Montreal, a public research and teaching museum dedicated to the preservation, study, diffusion, and appreciation of Canadian History, is presenting a new exhibition by Nadia Myre, an artist from the museum's Artist-in-Residence Program.

Nadia Myre is an Algonquin multidisciplinary artist. For this exhibition she draws her inspiration from Victorian (1837-1901) women’s periodicals, journals and publications to create her work. The periodicals came out once per month, and at the end of each year were bound together and published as a book. Those books consisted of a number of household advices for the comfortable, well-to-do class of women. There were musical scores for songs and compositions to entertain guests at a piano, and also instructions how-to do crafts, which included beadwork and making native-like objects.

Myre's project consisted of creating four items mentioned in the Victorian era journals that McCord Museum has in its permanent collection. One such item was a basket, featured in an image of a page just above on the right. The items from the magazines were selected by the museum's staff. Myre had no idea what they selected. The instructions how to make the items were recorded by the museum's staff, skipping and omitting all the words that named or identified the objects. All Myre had to work with were these oral, truncated instructions. Her task was to reconstruct and create the items without knowing what they were. The exhibition presents side by side the artist's final creations as well as the similar period items made by the native craftsmen which are in the McCord Museum's permanent collection.

Myre's idea was to recreate the native craftsmanship through the colonial appropriation of the instructions how to make the objects. By means of this conceptual installation, the artists reconnected to her native roots. She worked backwards, in a blind-like manner, without knowing exactly what she was making.

The results are pretty impressive. Come and visit the exhibition and see for yourself how it was done. Just imagine how you would have been able to manage with the skimpy instructions that Nadia Myre had, to create any items of use and beauty. The audio recordings of those initial instructions are available to the visitors, as well as a large video in the middle of the exhibition hall that depicts how the artist herself was handling this issue, working, reconstructing the objects on the bases of instructions she received.

You will see some other interesting items and documents on display like, for instance, period photos that attest to the Victorian people's interest in native artefacts.

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For more information, visit the McCord Museum website.