Carey Newman-Hayalthkin?geme’s work Witness Blanket is comprised of items collected from residential schools, survivors, churches, governments and other Canadian cultural sites.
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The West Vancouver Memorial Library will be home to Victoria artist Carey Newman-Hayalthkin’geme‘s monumental and important art piece Witness Blanket for a limited time.
On display for six weeks, beginning Jan. 26, the woven-blanket-inspired piece is made up of items collected from residential schools, survivors, churches, governments and other cultural sites across Canada. Measuring 40 feet long, the installation is immense in size and subject matter.
“Blankets are a universal symbol of comfort or care,” said Newman, who is a filmmaker as well as an instructor and the Impact Chair for Indigenous Art Practices at the University of Victoria. “Because this is about truth and reconciliation, I wanted it to be made into an image that people would recognize as comfort, as care.
“In Coast Salish culture we have ceremonies which we call blanketing people, and we do that to uplift or honour them. And we do that if they are going through difficult times. We’ll do that to protect them, so there’s lots of different reasons for blankets,” added Newman, who is Coast Salish and Kwakwaka’wakw.
The installation, consisting of 13, eight-foot-tall connected wood panels, is a photographic replica of the original Witness Blanket that was finished in spring 2014 and has a permanent home in the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg.
“The wear-and-tear of being on the road definitely started to take its toll,” said Newman about the decision to put the original piece in the museum.
Taren Urquhart, the West Vancouver Memorial Library’s arts and special events programmer, hopes people visit the Witness Blanket with a “completely open mind,” and understand that there is a lot to learn from the powerful piece.
Libraries are also accessible to all, something that is very important to Newman.
“It has been the ethos of this whole thing. Accessibility has been important all along,” said Newman. “The way we have approached this is, if reconciliation is for everyone, then it has to be something everybody can get to, can see. It can’t be presented in a way that is intimidating or exclusionary. So, libraries are wonderful places for that.”
The pieces on the original blanket, now represented in the high-resolution photos on the replica, all come from people with personal connections to the residential school system. Over a handful of years, Newman and a team followed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission around the country to its events.
“We went from place to place to place introducing the idea to people. Talking about this vision to make a blanket from objects, and slowly built relationships and trust throughout those travels and started gathering objects and gathering stories. And recording where they came from,” said Newman, whose father was a survivor of the residential school system.
In the end, 889 items including braids of hair, a Métis sash, a weather-beaten shoe, the door to the infirmary of St. Michael’s Residential School in Alert Bay, and photographs of young girls in front of St. Paul’s School in North Vancouver, were collected and put together to make the Witness Blanket.
“It invites the viewer in to really ask what these pieces are,” said Urquhart.
Now a decade out in the world, Newman is still “blown away,” by the effect the Witness Blanket has had and continues to have. It’s in a national museum and in school curriculums. There are books, a film and an upcoming virtual project.
“People sometimes ask me what I expected. And I say, well, we surpassed that, like, almost immediately,” said Newman. “Artists don’t ever expect that level of response to their work. At least I certainly don’t. I am continually humbled by how it makes it ways through the world and how people respond to it.”
Witness Blanket will be on display at the library until March 10. It’s a free exhibit open during regular library hours.
Newman will speak at the library on Feb. 8 from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. More related events, including talks and musical performances, are scheduled and can be found at westvanlibrary.ca.
