Brian Jungen (born April 29, 1970 in Fort St. John, British Columbia) is an artist of Dane-zaa and Swiss ancestry living and working in the North Okanagan of British Columbia.Hoffmann, Jens. "Brian Jungen: Prototypes for New Understanding ." Flash Art, 2003. Working in a diverse range of two and three-dimensional materials Jungen is widely regarded as a leading member of a new generation of Vancouver artists.Bartels, Kathleen S. "Director's Forward." Brian Jungen, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2005, p. 1. While Indigeneity and identity politics have been central to much of his work, Jungen has "a lot of other interests" and themes that run through his oeuvre.Milroy, Sarah. "Artist of the World, Unite ." Globe and Mail, 7 Feb. 2004. His work addresses many audiences' misconception that "native artists are not allowed to do work that is not about First Nations identity", by making poetic artworks that defy categorization.
Biography Jungen's father was a Swiss immigrant to Canada and met his mother, from the Dane-zaa nation, in the interior of British Columbia. The two married in the 1960s, and as a result, the government took away his mother's Indian status and treaty rights, which, according to the government's Indian Act, could only be determined paternally.Belanger, Yale D. (2014). Ways of Knowing An Introduction to Native Studies in Canada. Toronto, ON: Nelson. Born in 1970 Jungen was raised in the remote logging town of Fort St. JohnAugaitis, Daina. "Prototypes for New Understanding." Brian Jungen, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2005, p. 5. and attended public school where he developed an inclination towards visual art. His parents died in a fire and he was subsequently raised by his Aunt. Jungen moved to Vancouver for his post-secondary education, and graduated from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design with a Diploma of Visual Art in 1992."Brian Jungen CV." catrionajeffries.com/wpcontent/uploads/cv/Brian_Jungen_CV.pdf. Following his post-secondary education Jungen spent time studying art history at Concordia University in Montreal, before moving to New York in 1993. He befriended artist Nicole Eisenmann in New York before returning to VancouverMilroy, Sarah. "The Art of the Double Take." Globe and Mail, 4 Nov. 2000.
In 1997 Jungen participated in the group show Buddy Palace at the OR Gallery in Vancouver. Jungen's contribution was several wall drawings that explored the stereotyped representations of Indigenous peoples and cultures in BC.Watson, Scott. "Shapeshifter." Brian Jungen: CAG, Contemporary Art Gallery, 2002, p. 14. The wall drawings tried to understand what "people thought native art [was]" by soliciting drawings from people on the street and turning them into large-scale wall drawings. In 1999 Jungen had a solo show at the Charles H. Scott Gallery where he showed more wall drawings and his Prototypes for New Understanding (1998-2005). The exhibition caught the attention of the nation's art journalists, critics, academics and curators", and when the Vancouver Art Gallery purchased several of the sculptures, Jungen's importance and legitimacy was sealed.Watson, Scott. "Shapeshifter." Brian Jungen: CAG, Contemporary Art Gallery, 2002, p. 12-13. The Prototypes for New Understanding saw Jungen dismantling Nike Air Jordan sneakers, and reassembling them into forms with a striking resemblance to Northwest coast Indigenous masks. The sculptures poignantly drew a comparison between western material fantasies and the fetishism of the 'other' in settler society.Medina, Cuauhtemoc. "High Curios." Brian Jungen , Vancouver Art Gallery, 2005, p. 31.
In 2000 Jungen had a solo show at the OR Gallery where he mounted Shapeshifter,Rimmer, Cate. "Brian Jungen: Serious Play ." Visions, vol. 7, no. 3, July 2001. the first of an eventual three whale skeletons built out of white plastic lawn chairs and suspended in the gallery as if at a natural history museum. The 30' long sculpture pointed to anthropological methods of display, natural resources, commodification and globalization, among numerous other themes that activated the work.Augaitis, Daina. "Prototypes for New Understanding." Brian Jungen, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2005, p. 10. The idea of the captive whale was also important to Jungen's thinking as he saw "a parallel to the situation of the First Nations individual who is both marginalized and fetishized by mainstream culture". In the same way that a natural history museum preserves a whale skeleton, a museum of anthropology preserves Indigenous cultural 'artifacts', both institutions presume an "imminent extinction" of their displayed subjects.
In 2002 [Jungen] was awarded the inaugural $50,000 Sobey Art award. In 2004 Jungen installed Court at the exhibition space Triple Candie in New York. The life-size replica of a basketball court, made out of sweatshop sewing machine tables, pointed to globalization, exploitive labor and sports fetishism, and opened up new conceptual possibilities in Jungen's work. In 2005 a retrospective of his work traveled from New York's New Museum to the Vancouver Art Gallery, and Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. Jungen had an incredibly rapid rise to international fame, which brought with it a rigorous travel schedule; in response Jungen has taken to spending extended periods of time each year "up north, on the Doig River first Nation".Milroy, Sarah. "Brian Jungen: Work in Progress ." Canadian Art, 2011. His 2010/11 exhibition at Catriona Jefferies incorporated "raw animal hides, which were produced during Jungen's visits up north, where he... started hunting again with his relatives".Jacques, Michelle. "Tomorrow, Repeated: Brian Jungen." Exhibition Brochure: Art Gallery of Ontario. May 2011. Jungen has worked with the animal hides in numerous ways including making prints from them and stretching them over car parts and modern furniture "to make some of [his] own drums"."Brian Jungen in 'Vancouver.'" Art 21, 23 Sept. 2016, art21.org/artist/brian-jungen/. Trying to describe the sculpture Tomorrow Repeated, (2011) one journalist said: it is "a moose hide, stretched taut across a pair of metallic green car fenders and trussed in the back with strips of skin, like a corset, the whole thing sits on top of a white freezer – convenient storage for the meat the skin once wrapped".Whyte, Murray. "Brian Jungen at the AGO: A Canadian Art Superstar Goes Personal." Toronto Star, 7 May 2011. In his own words Jungen said: "people up there, on the reserve, have freezers everywhere, they have car parts everywhere, and they have animal parts everywhere".
In 2012 Jungen collaborated with artist Duane Linklater on the film Modest Livelihood, the hour-long film silently documents the two artists on a hunting trip in Northern British Columbia. The title of the film references the "1999 Supreme Court of Canada decision confirming First Nations' hunting and fishing rights but clarifying their limitation to the earning of a 'moderate livelihood'".Waxman, Lori. "Artists from Canada's First Nations Go Hunting with a 1m Camera." Chicago Tribune, 16 Jan. 2013. The film was shown in Banff in partnership with Documenta 13.Tousley, Nancy. "Brian Jungen and Duane Linklater: Hunting Retreat." Canadian Art, Aug. 2012. Jungen also exhibited in Kassel, Germany as part of Documenta 13's central programming. Jungen's contribution to Documenta was a dog park, made up of "sculptures that [functioned] both as tunnels and platforms for pets, as well as benches for their owners". The park was used by a local dog school offering training "sessions for dogs and [giving] short workshops for visitors on how the equipment in the dog park [could] be used". Also in 2012, Jungen's Prototypes for New Understanding and one of his lawn-chair whale skeletons Cetology represented Vancouver in the Vancouver Pavilion at the Shanghai Biennale.Morton, Brian. "VAG to Feature Works by Brian Jungen at Shanghai Biennale." Westcoast News, 20 Sept. 2012.
In 2016 Jungen had shows at both Catriona Jefferies and Casey Kaplan, which saw the artist returning to one of his original materials: Nike sneakers. "The new sculptures [were] entirely different – more open and abstract".Ledernan, Marsha. "Three Can't-Miss Contemporary-Art Shows." Globe and Mail, 23 Jan. 2016. The abstract sculptures have a strong modernist sensibility and an understanding of materials that "characterizes so much of Jungen's work".Hill, Richard William. "Close Readings: Brian Jungen'." CMagazine, 2016, p. 53. These new shoe "works are less a direct representation and contain more a suggestion of animal and human faces" they confront our desire to "search for and recognize... patterns" by disappointing audiences who may be searching for Jungen's iconic masks."Brian Jungen CV." catrionajeffries.com/wp-content/uploads/cv/Brian_Jungen_CV.pdf.
In 2022, the Art Gallery of Ontario unveiled its first public art commission by Jungen titled, Couch Monster: Sadzěʔ yaaghęhch’ill. The Dane-zaa within the title translates to "my heart is ripping". Jungen inspired by the famous large elephant, Jumbo, wanted to convey how there is cruelly in entertainment and art. This public art piece is located in downtown Toronto at the corner of Dundas and McCaul where Henry Moore's Large Two Forms (1966-1969) once resided from 1974-2017. Couch Monster is Jungen's first installation in bronze. There is a duality with this piece in that it can be seen both as whimsical and sad. Constructed out of pieces of couch materials the sculpture is covered in different textures and is made to be touched.
Themes Throughout his career Jungen has created poetic artworks which explore a diversity of themes through their openness to multiple interpretations and have "resisted the trap of racial pigeon-holing". Jungen's work makes "connections between his First Nations ancestry, Western art history and the global economy". His breakout series Prototypes for New Understanding was loaded with enough clues to "[allow] writers to connect the dots between globalization, Nike's Third World sweatshops, and Canada's institutionalized" colonial racism.Watson, Scott. "Shapeshifter." Brian Jungen: CAG, Contemporary Art Gallery, 2002, p. 15. Several themes have been consistently pursued throughout his career including museology, consumerism/ globalization, identity politics and animals.
Museology