Felicia Gay working to change narratives through art in Sask. – The Kingston Whig-Standard

A man with chiselled features and serious brown eyes looked out from a billboard on 20th Street in Saskatoon. His right hand held a hammer high.

Wally Dion created this portrait. Putting it on a billboard in 2006 was Felicia Gay’s idea.

“I thought it would be really great to have it on a billboard in the core neighbourhood, so that when people are driving by on their way to work … there’s just a strong, beautiful Indigenous man, who’s a worker,” said Gay.

“His image was really pushing up against a stereotype that people just accept on 20th Street. … I think the perception is that every Indigenous person you see there is on welfare and not working, which is not true.”

Since Gay began curating art exhibitions 15 years ago in Saskatoon, interrupting the dominant narrative has been her goal.

She sought to do so at Wanuskewin, the last place she worked in Saskatoon. And it’s her aim at the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina, where she’s now a curatorial fellow.

Another of Gay’s first examples of using art to change a narrative was the Moon Lake Series, photographs Gay created with artist Joi Arcand.

“It was so emotionally draining that I never made art again. It was traumatizing,” said Gay, reflecting upon a sepia photograph. As the model in the photo, Arcand’s eyes are closed, head leaning against a tree. She’s covered in a blanket, which is covered in leaves.

This photo was part of the exhibition Give Her A Face, which showed at AKA Gallery and was dedicated to six missing and murdered Indigenous women — Calinda Waterhen, Shelly Napope, Eva Taysup, Mary Jane Serloin, Janet Christine Sylvestre, and Shirley Lonethunder. Serial killer John Martin Crawford was convicted of killing the first four women. Waterhen, Napope and Taysup’s remains were found in 1994 at Moon Lake near Saskatoon.

“When I was 16, this case made such an impression on me because I remember distinctly that all these women were identified as street workers, women that were in dangerous situations, basically saying that they kind of caused this violence upon themselves,” Gay recalled. “They were never given the dignity of having a picture in the newspaper.”

Gay curated the exhibition, designed to make people see “that these were human beings, these women were human and deserved better.”

Gay was born in Edmonton to a Swampy Cree mother and Scottish father — he had come to Canada, ironically, to work for the Hudson Bay Company.

She was raised in Cumberland House, 300 kilometres northeast of Prince Albert, a community well known as the Hudson Bay Company’s first inland trading post.

“I read a lot and I loved art. But I didn’t know anything about art history. I didn’t know anything about Indigenous people actually having a visual culture and contemporary art,” said Gay.

She left Cumberland House as an 18-year-old to attend the University of Saskatchewan, where she says an Indigenous art history class with Ruth Cuthand opened her eyes.

“For the first time I saw that there are all these contemporary Indigenous artists that have utilized visual culture to create voice, to kind of move and push gently, sometimes aggressively, at that dominant narrative. And I just became passionate about contemporary art.”

During university, Gay worked at the Snelgrove Gallery at the U of S, and at a small gallery in The Pas. She later worked for the Tribe Inc. artist-run centre.

“It’s like fate was just kind of pulling me the direction it wanted me to go and at some point I just had to kind of go all-in” as a curator, said Gay.

“I knew I had a lot to say, … and it was a way for me to talk about the lens that I come from as a northerner, and as a woman,” she added.

Coming to the end of her art history degree, Gay was at a loss for job prospects.

She didn’t want to move too far from home — even now, Regina is farther away than she’d like to be.

“I was reading Linda Tuhiwai Smith, an article about language nests. And it was about how these local Indigenous women, kokums and women from the neighbourhood, they created these language nests to revitalize the Maori language. And holy crap, I was so inspired,” said Gay.

“I’m like, why the hell am I waiting for a job? I’ll make my own job, you know? I’ll start my own artist-run centre and I’ll do this for my people.”

She called her classmate Arcand and pitched the plan. They had a fundraiser, rented a storefront downtown on 20th Street, enlisted family members to help renovate, and kept fundraising.

The Red Shift gallery was born.

“It was a way for us to work strategically with our Indigenous art community so that they could either show their work to our community where they’re at, or else to help make career artists buff up their CV so they could get into the galleries if that’s what they wanted to do,” said Gay.

She felt it was important to give to the community, since she heard so often that she’d have to move to Toronto or Montreal to have a curatorial career.

“I did Red Shift gallery for five years with no pay, and I was teaching at the university as a sessional,” said Gay. She had three children (her fourth was born since) and was working on her master’s degree. She did all the administrative and physical work running the gallery, and she burnt out.

Red Shift closed in 2010.

“There’s so much expected from artist-run centre directors for such little pay that it’s totally unfair, but we need them,” said Gay. “They serve a real purpose in our community and they certainly need a lot more support than they receive. Because they reach people that wouldn’t necessarily come to larger public institutions, and they can be like a gateway for people to come to larger institutions and feel welcome … And that’s why I’m here, I think.”

Since October, Gay has worked as a curatorial fellow at the MacKenzie. She’s working part-time, primarily on researching the Kampelmacher collection that was donated in 2016.

She’s also pursuing her PhD at the University of Regina, about interrogating white supremacy and patriarchy within cultural institutions.

“I’ve worked in all different types of institutions — whether it was not-for-profit organizations, within academia, within artist-run centre culture, Indigenous cultural institutions — and throughout them all, I’ve experienced patriarchy and white supremacy that has touched me personally in various ways,” said Gay.

“So how do we create safe spaces? … There needs to be change within infrastructure, within how boards are enacted, lots of things.”

She has other projects on the go, too.

At the MacKenzie, she’s bringing in Power Lines, an exhibition she curated at Wanuskewin featuring the work of Norval Morrisseau.

She is also working on a group exhibition called Touching Earth and Sky.

On the side, she’s guest curating this fall’s 2020 Biennal of Contemporary Art through the Remai Art Gallery.

And, she’ll be back in Saskatoon early next year for a large-scale exhibition of Ruth Cuthand’s work, which she’s curating at the College galleries on campus.

“It’s a lot of work. I have a lot on my plate, definitely, but I’ve done it before,” said Gay.

amartin@postmedia.com