Emma Hassencahl-Perley wants to showcase Indigenous feminism and female political voices through curated art.
That’s the idea behind wesuwe-tpelomosu, an exhibition organized by the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in collaboration with the work the renowned Indigenous artists.
“I wanted to show that women had agency before contact, and they continue to have agency in their families and communities,” she said.
Hassencahl-Perley started working at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in 2018 after she was hired as a curator for the New Brunswick Art Bank’s 50th anniversary.
This is piece by Chief Lady Bird of Rama First Nation. Hassencahl-Perley says the artists is interested in how Indigenous women will contribute to fixing climate change and what that role will look like. (Submitted by Beaverbrook Art Gallery)
She stayed on and worked at the gallery as a curatorial intern until recently, when she transitioned to become the newly appointed curator of Indigenous art.
“This exhibition was inspired by my thesis, and it was a response to the exhibition that I had been studying for so long.” she said.
Standing in their power: Indigenous artists in new exhibition
Newly appointed curator of Indigenous art at Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Emma Hassencahl-Perley, is Wolastoqiyik from Neqotkuk First Nation in New Brunswick.
Hassencahl-Perley, a visual artist in her own right, is Wolastoqiyik from Neqotkuk First Nation, also known as Tobique, in western New Brunswick.
She also lectures on Indigenous art history at the Wabanaki Visual Arts program at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design in Fredericton.
She said her love for art started in childhood, when she could barely hold a crayon.
“My art was fostered from a really young age … My mom let me draw all over my bedroom walls.”
Indigenous Feminism through art
Wesuwe-tpelomosu, the name of the current exhibition at the gallery, loosely translates to mean self-determination. It also can mean “returning to a former condition in being responsible for oneself,” she said.
Hassencahl-Perley says she chose Carolyn Monnet’s work, Renaissance, because it shows Indigenous women standing in their power and being unapologetic. (Pat Richard/ CBC)
It aims to examine modern matriarchy through a sample of the history and life of Indigenous women’s leadership and activism within their families and communities.
The exhibit includes 10 Indigenous artists from across the country, including Shirley Bear and Samaqani Cocahq, also known as Natalie Sappier, from New Brunswick.
Hassencahl-Perley said there is a rising curiosity to know more about Indigenous history.
“There is a growing hunger for knowledge, and we have to figure out ways to facilitate that to the public in ways that are genuine and respectful,” she said.
A piece from Larissa Kitchemonia, Anishnaabe-Saulteaux, called All My Relations. Hassencahl-Perley says it celebrates matrilineal knowledge and interconnectedness. (Submitted by Beaverbrook Art Gallery)
She says the exhibition is an opportunity to learn about the territory and home of lndigenous peoples.
Hassencahl-Perley added long descriptive labels with the information behind each work, why they’re chosen, how they into the theme of the exhibition.
She said she’s excited about her new role at the gallery, which will require her to organize and curate Indigenous exhibitions and look after historic art pieces acquired from Indigenous communities.
“I feel good. I feel grounded. I feel like I’m in good company,” she said.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
