Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill | Jeneen Frei Njootli | Tania Willard | Chandra Melting Tallow
CONEY ISLAND BABY
October 3 – November 15, 2019
Opening Thursday, October 3 at 7:30PM in the ODD Gallery at Dënäkär Zho /KIAC
Screening + Conversation + Rabbit Stew Snack with Jeneen Frei Njootli
Saturday, September 28th, 2pm at Dänojà Zho Cultural Centre
Family Exhibition Tour with Tania Willard & Gabrielle Hill
Thursday, October 24th at 4pm, ODD Gallery
Artist Talk & Lunch with Tania Willard & Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill
Friday, October 25 at noon, SOVA Gallery, Yukon School of Visual Arts (downstairs)
Rabbit Pom Pom Earrings Workshop with Sharon Vittrekwa
Friday, October 25th, 2 – 4pm, SOVA 3D Studio (upstairs)
Emphasizing invisible labour and Indigenous-led economies, Coney Island Baby is a collaborative project created by Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill, Jeneen Frei Njootli, Chandra Melting Tallow and Tania Willard on Secwépemc territory at at BUSH GALLERY. Featuring a short film that follows the artists as they learn how to snare wild rabbits, the project explores concepts of gender, nationhood, labour and land.
BIOGRAPHIES
Jeneen Frei Njootli is a Vuntut Gwich’in artist and a founding member of the ReMatriate Collective. In her interdisciplinary practice she uses media such as performance, sound and textiles. Much of her work deconstructs the history of the materials she uses. She investigates their relationship to trade, ceremonial regalia, and the politics of First Nations art. Her work as a contemporary Indigenous artist has been recognized throughout Canada. In 2017, Njootli was longlisted as a nominee for the national Sobey Art Award and shortlisted for the Contemporary Art Society Vancouver Artist Prize. In 2016 she won the William and Meredith Saunderson Prize for Emerging Artists. She has completed multiple residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Banff, Alberta. For her recent Media Arts Residency at the Western Front, Vancouver, British Columbia, she hosted a free workshop teaching participants how to create and update Wikipedia pages for Indigenous women artists. In 2017, Jeneen Frei Njootli earned her MFA from University of British Columbia as an uninvited guest on unceded Musqueam, Squamish, Sto:lo and Tsleil-Waututh territories.
Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill is a Metis artist and writer from Vancouver, BC, located on unceded Musqueam, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and Tsleil-Waututh territory. Hill’s sculptures and installations perform as both a material exploration of colour and form and an enquiry into concepts of land, property, and economy. Her work has been exhibited at the Polygon Gallery, the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery, Sunset Terrace, and Gallery Gachet in Vancouver; SBC galerie d’art contemporain in Montreal; STRIDE gallery in Calgary; SOMArts in San Francisco; and Get This! Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia.
Chandra Melting Tallow is an interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and musician of mixed ancestry from the Siksika Nation. Their practice often confronts the ghosts of intergenerational trauma and their relationship to the body, utilizing humour and surrealism to subvert oppressive structures of power. Recent work includes the 2017 film, soundtrack, and accompanying performance Rapture of Roses for Unsettling Colonial Gender Boundaries as part of Queer Arts Festival in Vancouver. In addition to composing the original score, they are a co-editor of Coney Island Baby.
Tania Willard (Secwepemc Nation) works within the shifting ideas of contemporary and traditional as it relates to cultural arts and production, often working with bodies of knowledge and skills that are conceptually linked to her interest in intersections between Aboriginal and other cultures. Willard has worked as a curator in residence with grunt gallery and Kamloops Art Gallery. Willard’s curatorial work includes Beat Nation: Art, Hip Hop, and Aboriginal Culture, a national touring exhibition first presented at Vancouver Art Gallery in 2011. Alongside Karen Duffek, she co-curated Unceded Territories: Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun at the Museum of Anthropology. As a practicing artist, Willard’s recent project BUSH gallery collapses the boundary between artist and curator while creating space for experimental contemporary art practice in a land-based, outdoor environment outside of institutional spaces. BUSH gallery hosts an annual rez-idency on Willard’s family land on Neskonlith Indian reserve, near Chase, BC, part of Secwepemculecw.
The exhibition CONEY ISLAND BABY will be on view October 3 – November 15, 2019 in the ODD Gallery at Dënäkär Zho / KIAC.
ODD Gallery gratefully acknowledges support from the Canada Council for the Arts.