Rebecca Belmore (born March 22, 1960) is an interdisciplinary Anishinaabekwe artist from Canada who is notable for politically conscious and socially aware performance and installation work. She is Ojibwe and a member of Obishikokaang (Lac Seul First Nation)."Rebecca Belmore: Facing the Monumental" , Art Gallery of Ontario, 2018. Belmore lives in Toronto, Ontario.
Belmore has performed and exhibited nationally and internationally since 1986. Her work focuses on issues of place and identity, and confronts challenges for First Nations People. Her work addresses history, voice and voicelessness, place, and identity. Her work, be it sculpture, video, or photographic in nature, is performance-based. To address the politics of representation, Belmore's art strives to invert or subvert official narratives, while demonstrating a preference for the use of repetitive gestures and natural materials. Belmore's art reveals a long-standing commitment to politics and how they relate to the construction of identity and ideas of representation. She has exhibited across Canada, the US, Mexico, Cuba and Australia.
Life Belmore was born on March 22, 1960, in Upsala, Ontario, Canada.Belmore at The Canadian Encyclopedia, accessed September 8, 2019 Until the age of 16, Belmore spent her summers in Northwestern Ontario with her grandparents. During these summers, her grandmother taught her about harvesting native foods from the land. Author Jessica Bradley describes Belmore's adolescence as difficult due to "the custom ingrained through the [Canadian] government imposed assimilation, she was sent to attend high school in Thunder Bay and billeted with a non-Native family." Bradley adds that as a result of her experience as an adolescent, notions of displacement and cultural loss are "reformed into acts or objects of reparation and protest [within her various works]." Belmore attended the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto in 1988.
Belmore's mother was born on a small island in Northern Ontario and her journey to visit her mother's birthplace has had a significant impact on her work.
Career
Belmore has presented work in biennial exhibitions throughout her career. In 1991, she exhibited at the IV Bienal de la Habana, Havana, Cuba. She has twice represented Canada at the Sydney Biennale; in 1998 in the exhibition Every Day, and in 2006 in the exhibition Zones of Contact. In 2005 her work Fountain was shown at the Canadian Pavilion of the 51st Venice Biennale, as the first Indigenous artist ever to represent Canada at the event. In the same year she exhibited as part of Sweet Taboos at the 3rd Tirana Biennale, Tirana, Albania.
Jolene Rickard's Venice Biennale Catalogue essay describes Belmore's work:
Belmore has had two major solo touring exhibitions, The Named and the Unnamed, a multi-part installation that commemorates women missing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver (2002); and 33 Pieces, Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto at Mississauga (2001). In 2008, the Vancouver Art Gallery hosted Rising to the Occasion, a mid-career survey of Belmore's artistic production. In 2014, Belmore was commissioned to create an original work for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights The work consists of a blanket of hand pressed clay beads, engaging the community in Winnipeg to help produce them.
In 2010, Belmore was involved in a legal dispute with the Pari Nadimi Gallery of Toronto, that sued her for punitive damages and for lost future revenues to $750,000. The lawsuit was settled out of court in 2013; however, inspired her 2010 performance WORTH.
In 2017, Belmore's work was exhibited at documenta 14 in Athens, Greece and in Kassel, Germany.
In 2018, the Art Gallery of Ontario staged a touring retrospective of Belmore's work, Facing the Monumental. Curated by Wanda Nanibush, Facing the Monumental incorporates sculptures, installations, photography and videos spanning 30 years of Belmore's career. It has been the largest exhibition of her work to date, and shown at galleries in Canada and the United States.
Belmore participated in the 2022 Whitney Biennial in New York. Her sculptural installation ishkode (fire) (2021), a clay sculpture of a figure shrouded in a sleeping bag and surrounded by empty bullet shell casings, was included in the exhibition. Journalist Gabriella Angeleti described the piece in The Art Newspaper as "a critique of the historic genocide and ongoing disproportionate violence against Indigenous people," calling the work "a centerpiece" of the exhibition.
Artworks
Descriptions of important works Belmore's interactive installation Mawa-che-hitoowin: A Gathering of People for Any Purpose (1992), featured a circle of chairs from Belmore's kitchen and kitchen chairs owned by other women close to her, arranged in a circle. Each chair had a pair of headphones resting on it. Visitors were invited to sit in each chair, put on the headphones, and listen to the stories of the struggles and triumphs of different indigenous women in Canada, told in their own voices. The work was commissioned for an exhibition of Indigenous art on the 500th anniversary of Columbus's arrival in Hispaniola. As such, it used Indigenous traditions of storytelling and passing on wisdom from elders as a way to push back against Native stereotypes and victimization.
Select works Source: Twelve Angry Crinolines (1987), parade and video performance, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. Collaboration with Ana Demetrakopoulos, Kim Erickson, Lori Gilbert, Joane Lachapelle-Bayak, Glenn McLeod, Karen Maki, Sandy Pandia and Lynne Sharman; organized by Lynne Sharman Artifact #671B (1988), protest in support of the Lubicon Cree and against the Olympic Flame celebrations, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada High-tech Teepee Trauma Mama (1988), performance installation, Indian Days Native Student Association Winter Carnival, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay Ontario, Canada HOWUH! (1988), music based performance project with Allen De Leary, Definitely Superior Art Gallery and Thunder Bay Indian Friendship Centre, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada Nah-doe-tah-moe-win: Means an Object That You Listen To (1989), Niagara Artists Centre, Saint Catharines, Ontario, Canada; Galerie SAW Gallery, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; Multi-media Works: A Native Perspective, AKA Gallery, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada August 29, 1990 (1990), performance, Première Biennale d'art actuel de Québec, Le Lieu, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada Ayum-ee-aawach Oomama-mowan: Speaking to Their Mother (1991), performance, Walter Phillips Gallery, The Banff Centre, Banff, Alberta, Canada; toured to numerous locations across Canada (1991–1996) Creation or Death: We Will Win (1991), performance, IV Bienal de la Habana, Havana, Cuba Mawa-che-hitoowin: A Gathering of People for Any Purpose (1992), mixed-media installation, "Land/Spirit/Power" exhibition, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada I am not a Fucken Squaw! (1993), performance, Distance education program student graduation banquet, Sioux Lookout, Ontario, Canada Affiliation/Affliction (1994), collaboration with Reona Brass, Rencontre internationale d'art performance (RIAP) de Quebec, Le Lieu, Quebec, Canada Tourist Act #1 (1995), participatory performance, Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico, U.S.A Interview with the Ghost of Luna (1997), performance, "Apocalypso" artist's residency, The Banff Centre, Banff, Alberta, Canada Garden of Eden (1998), performance, Five New Works (untitled), Canadian Performance Art Tour, Germany Manifesto (1999), performance, TIME TIME TIME performance art festival, Fado Performance, Inc., Zsa Zsa Gallery, Toronto, Ontario, Canada The Indian Factory (2000), performance making an installation, High-tech Storytellers: An Interdisciplinary Aboriginal Art Project, Tribe/AKA Gallery, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada Wild (2001), House Guests: Contemporary Artists in the Grange, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Vigil (2002), performance, Talking Stick Aboriginal Art Festival, Full Circle First Nations Performance, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada Tongue River (2003), performance collaboration with Bently Spang, Fado Performance, Inc., Toronto, Ontario, Canada Back to the Garden (2006), performance, Urban Shaman/ Ace Art, Inc., Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada "Freeze" with Osvaldo Yero (2006), Nuit Blanche, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Painted Road (2007), performance, gravel road behind the Art Gallery of Sudbury, Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada Making Always War (2008), performance, performance assistant: Daina Warren, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Exhibitions Select solo exhibitions Source: Artifact #671B (1988), Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada Crazy Old Woman Child (1988), Indian Friendship Centre, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada I'm a High-Tech Teepee Trauma Mama (1988), Native Student Council, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada Mushkegokwe/Swampwoman (1988), Women Against Military Madness, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA Nah-doe-tah-moe-win (1989), Galerie Saw, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Ayumee-aawach Oomama-Mowan: Speaking to Their Mother with Marjorie Beaucage (1992), XYZ, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Wana-na-wang-ong (1993), Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada I Wait for the Sun (1994), Faret Tachikawa Art Project, Art Front Gallery, Tokyo, Japan Tourist Act #1 (1995), Institute of American Indian Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA Dreamers (1999), Keyano College Art Gallery, Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada Many/One (1999), Optica, Montreal, Quebec, Canada on this ground (2000), Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art, Providence, Rhode Island, USA Private Collection (2001), Pari Nadimi Gallery, Toronto, Ontario, Canada 33 Pieces (2001), organized by Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto at Mississauga, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada; toured to Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada (2002); Parry Sound Station Gallery, Parry Sound, Ontario, Canada (2002); Definitely Superior Gallery, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada (2003); W.K.P. Kennedy Public Art Gallery, Capitol Centre, North Bay, Ontario, Canada (2003) The Named and the Unnamed (2002), organized by Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; toured to Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (2003); Kamloops Art Gallery, Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada (2004); Confederation Art Centre, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada (2004); McMaster Museum of Art, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada (2006) Extreme (2003), Pari Nadimi Gallery, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Temperance (2004), Tribe, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada Untitled 1, 2, 3 (2005), grunt gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada The Capture of Mary March, Pari Nadimi Gallery, Toronto, Ontario, Canada` Parallel (2006), Urban Shaman/ Ace Art, Inc., Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada cosi in cielo, cosi in terra (2006), Franco Soffiantino Arte Contemporanea, Turin, Italy Rebecca Belmore: Rising to the Occasion (2008), Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada March 5, 1819 (2008), The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada Rebecca Belmore: Facing the Monumental (2018), Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Selected group exhibitions
1988: Souvenir from the Northern Front, Mayworks, Toronto, Ontario, Canada 1988: See Jane Sew Strontium, Definitely Superior, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada 1988: The New Traditionalists, Definitely Superior, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada 1989: Changers: A Spiritual Renaissance, National Arts and Crafts Corporation, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada 1989: Broadcast, Definitely Superior, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada 1990: Biennale d'art actuel, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada