The Entangled Gaze: Indigenous and European Views of Each Other.

The Entangled Gaze: Indigenous and European Views of Each Other.

The Entangled Gaze: Indigenous and European Views of Each Other was a two-day conference co-hosted by OCAD University and the Art Gallery of Ontario. The conference convened an international group of scholars and museum professionals from the fields of art history, anthropology, cultural studies and curatorial practice to explore the topic of how Indigenous and European artists have represented each other in historical art and visual culture. The conference builds on the ground-breaking work of Julius Lips, “The Savage Hits Back, or The White Man through Native Eyes” (1937), Nii Quarcoopome’s landmark exhibition “Through African Eyes: The European in African Art, 1500 to Present (2010) at the Detroit Institute of Art, and on the research of project lead Dr. Gerald McMaster, conducted over the past decade, into how historical Indigenous artists in North America have represented their Euro-American Others.

The goals of The Entangled Gaze were as follows:

  • To generate new knowledge of the media, methods and meanings of historical Indigenous and European representations of each other;
  • To develop innovative conceptual approaches to the study of Indigenous and Euro-North American art/histories, by drawing on Indigenous epistemologies and perspectives in order to generate scholarship outside the mainstream anthropological/art historical purview;
  • To share and develop new interdisciplinary methodologies for collecting, interpreting and disseminating knowledge on the diverse artistic histories of Indigenous and Euro-North American peoples;
  • To communicate this knowledge to our scholarly, professional and public audiences in relevant and accessible media;
  • To develop OCAD University’s Indigenous Visual Culture Research Centre as an international leader in collaborative research on the art/histories of Indigenous and Euro-North American peoples.

Drawing on a global archive of Indigenous and Euro-North American art and visual and material culture from international public collections, conference contributors will approach two key questions:

  • how do we represent people who are different from ourselves, and
  • what are the consequences or results that arise out of this representation?

For over a decade, Dr. McMaster has been gathering various types of information on how First Nations and Inuit artists depict Europeans or people of European ancestry. We are all, of course, familiar with European and North American artistic representations of First Nations and the Inuit; however, the reverse is not within the current artistic or public discourse. In effect, there is an unequal dialectical exchange. McMaster’s course of research is intended to redress this inequality. In 2013-14 he examined 38 European collections, where much early North American material history is housed; since then, he remains the sole researcher with sustained interest in this particular subject matter. Dr. McMaster’s research is grounded in the theory of the “reverse gaze,” a conceptual approach he uses to promote Indigenous representations of Europeans as primary documents in the reconstruction of Canadian history.

Conference participants are international and interdisciplinary researchers, museum professionals, artists, and Indigenous Elders. As anthropologist Regna Darnell has pointed out, cross-cultural study of the Other is no longer the preserve of the discipline of anthropology. Drawing from perspectives in art/history, cultural studies, fine art and anthropology, The Entangled Gaze will also generate print and online publications from a range of disciplinary perspectives. Select papers will be published as peer-reviewed articles in a special issue of AbOriginal: Journal of Indigenous Studies and First Nations’ and First Peoples’ Cultures, for which primary applicant Dr. Gerald McMaster is an Editor.

Conference participants included: host Gerald McMaster; artists Kent Monkman, Bonnie Devine, Barry Ace, Rosalie Favel, Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie, Embassy of Imagination, Lisa Myers; scholars Krista Ulujuk Zawadski, Rainer Hatoum, Kaitlin McCormick, Jonathan King, Nicole Perry, Monika Siebert, Christopher Green, Anna Brus, Markus Lindner, Rick Hill; and curators Wanda Nanibush, Nika Collison Jisgang, Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse, Nii Q. Quarcoopome, and Candace Greene.


Videos

The Entangled Gaze: Indigenous and European Views Of Each Other

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=No2kcnWRJOc&list=PLDDrb99ry1H61ir6aHONiiTTlYeQ5Tx-j&modestbranding=1&rel=0
See schedule here: http://www.entangledgaze.ca/schedule/

Links

The Entangled Gaze Website
The Savage Hits Back Revisited
The Savage Hits Back Revisited review

This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

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Watapah Team Contributors

Dr. Gerald McMaster

Position: Director, Tier 1 Canada Research Chair
Email: gmcmaster@faculty.ocadu.ca

Dr. McMaster has over 30 years international work and expertise in contemporary art, critical theory, museology and Indigenous aesthetics. His experience as an artist and curator in art and ethnology museums researching and collecting art, as well as producing exhibitions has given him a thorough understanding of transnational Indigenous visual culture and curatorial practice. His early interests concerned the ways in which culturally sensitive objects were displayed in ethnology museums, as well as the lack of representation of Indigenous artists in art museums.

As a practicing artist, he offered a way of staging hitherto decontextualized objects different from the traditional formats favoured by exhibition designers trained in Western traditions; instead, his was an approach that rested on Indigenous epistemologies. These early stages in developing an –Indigenous visuality led him to study concepts in visual, experiential and spatial composition. His exhibition Savage Graces (1992) challenged long held views, and played a major role in breaking down conventional barriers around where art should be practiced, while also demonstrating that art is not tied to ethnicity.

As a curator, he focused on advancing the intellectual landscape for Indigenous curatorship through the foundational concept of voice. He curated, for example, an exhibition called Indigena (1992) that brought together unfiltered Indigenous voices for the first time. Until then, non-Indigenous scholars had dominated discussions of Indigenous art, history and culture. McMaster made the point that Indigenous artists and writers were more than capable of representing themselves in articulate, eloquent ways.

Over the past 20 years, he has continued to refine the idea of voice, leading him to ask: How can Indigenous voices continue providing new perspectives on well-researched subjects such as art, history and anthropology? Throughout his career, his championing of the mainstream value of Indigenous art, among other things, has led to his being chosen to represent Canada at a number of prestigious international events. These include his serving as Canadian Commissioner for the 1995 Venice Biennale, and as artistic director of the 2012 Biennale of Sydney, and curator for the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. 

Dr. Gerald McMaster

Director, Tier 1 Canada Research Chair

Dr. McMaster has over 30 years international work and expertise...

Peter Scott

Position: Alumni

Peter’s background includes business management, executive education-programming, from the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Executive Programs. He holds a BFA degree (Hons) from York University, a Master’s Degree in Design – Strategic Foresight Innovation from OCAD University, and several executive education certificates from: the MIT Sloan School Entrepreneurship Program, the Wharton School of Business, the INSEAD School of Business Social Entrepreneurship Program, and the Rotman School of Management, Executive Programs, Integrative Thinking Program. His research focus includes integrative and design thinking, entrepreneurship, social innovation, social finance and Microfinance. Peter was RA for the Cree Code Talker research project and symposium in 2016 at the INVC Research Centre, and he continues to work with the INVC RC on strategic planning projects, workshops and upcoming conference in 2017. Peter has also written several blog posts at SocialFinance.ca, the Toronto International Microfinance Summit, and was a lead organizing committee member for the INTERSECTION: Entrepreneurship & Indigenous Arts Conference at OCAD University. Currently, Peter is co-founder of a social enterprise, and a freelance instructor at Sheridan College, OCAD University, and McMaster University.

Peter Scott

Alumni

Peter’s background includes business management, executive education-programming, from the Rotman...

Dr. Julia Lum

Position: Alumni

Julia Lum is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Art at the University of Toronto. She is co-editor, with Gerald McMaster and Kaitlin McCormick, of a special issue of ab-Original: Journal of Indigenous Studies and First Nations and First Peoples’ Cultures on the theme of “The Entangled Gaze: Indigenous and European Views of Each Other.” She is also co-investigator (with Dr. McMaster and Jisgang Nika Collison of the Haida Gwaii Museum) on a SSHRC Indigenous Research Capacity and Reconciliation Connection Grant to develop a knowledge-exchange workshop on digital collections and the art of the colonial “contact zone.” Dr. Lum earned her PhD in Art History from Yale University in 2018. In the fall of 2019 she will be Assistant Professor, Art History, Scripps College (Claremont, USA).

Dr. Julia Lum

Alumni

Julia Lum is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of...

Kaitlin McCormick

Position: Alumni

Kaitlin worked closely with Dr. McMaster to develop research in support of the Indigenous Visual Culture Research Centre’s Indigenous Views of the Other project, and drafted grant materials that resulted in the award of SSHRC Insight and Connection grants in 2017 and 2018, respectively. She helped organize speakers for the Entangled Gaze: Indigenous Views of the Other conference, co-hosted by OCAD University and the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2017. Together with Gerald and Julia Lum, McCormick co-authored the introduction to the conference proceedings, published as a special issue of ab-Original: Journal of Indigenous Studies and First Nations and First Peoples’ Cultures, and authored the essay, “Frederick Alexcee’s Entangled Gazes,” which appears in that issue. McCormick received her PhD in Canadian Studies from the University of Edinburgh in 2016, and is Curator of Western Ethnology at the Canadian Museum of History.

Kaitlin McCormick

Alumni

Kaitlin worked closely with Dr. McMaster to develop research in...

       
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