From small contemporary beads, mighty Indigenous art grows

When Indigenous people on this continent wove and worked beads together - in wampum belts, on mocassins, in necklaces and a multitude of other objects and symbols of cultural significance - they were doing more than craft.

They were stitching themselves together in a manner of speaking, one generation with the next, one shared value to another, and after colonization they were doing it as others were trying to tear them apart; tear them apart, not just one from another, parent from child, but apart from their own customs, languages, history, from their own beadwork.

In the European tradition, when a creative process has that kind of power, to make meaning and connection, through time, through hardship, against resistance, it is called art.

This is some background to why the new exhibition at the Art Gallery of Hamilton is so vitally refreshing and important. So radical."

Radical Stitch" is showing contemporary Indigenous beadwork, as art, which it always was. The beadwork is taking its place on the same walls, mounted on the same pedestals, filling the same space, more conventionally occupied by paintings, sculptures and other fine art" objects of a different tradition.

Intricate, gloriously colourful, traditional, avant-garde, hilarious, painful, healing beadwork.

By the imposed standard of another era, of an alien system of authority over not just politics but taste, Indigenous beadwork objects were often considered mere trinkets.

But, by the standard of courage and ingenuity and by the forceful authority of good will of the people who have put on this show, in our era, beadwork is in the right place. Reclaimed. Radical Stitch, a radiantly beautiful examination of contemporary beading in the context of cultural and artistic challenge.

When the curators call the show Radical Stitch, the adjective is not idly chosen. It is radical, both politically and in the sense of to the root."

Beadwork was and is such a powerful strand in the fabric of Indigenous culture throughout Canada and North America that it speaks, in colour and pattern and adornment, and it speaks a language of ancestry and continuity.

Continuity, indeed, into the future, and into the expansion of intercultural reference and value.

Consider a piece like Jamie Okuma's Beaded Boots," made with antique glass, steel, brass and aluminum on re-appropriated boots by Giuseppe Zanotti.

It creates such a striking effect, combining the beads, so richly colourful with turquoise background and elk motif, with a playfully low-high/pop-haute couture outrageousness and hyperbole, all stiletto heels and phonebook thick platform soles. Is this the new moccasin?

There is much humour - thoughtful humour - in the exhibition, as well as seriousness, reverence and struggle, some with contemporary edge and some with deep traditional echoes. There is everything from regalia to sculpture, mixed media, painting, jewelry and fabric art to conceptual pieces and depictions of outer space, such as in the beautiful Milky Way."

All of it is magnificent. All of it done with beads. All kinds of beads.

We wanted people to appreciate the skill and ideas that go into beadwork and to show the bridge between craft and (so-called fine) art," says Sherry Farrell Racette, one of the three curators of the travelling exhibition, along with Michele LaVallee and Cathy Mattes.

The show combines many artists from many nations and practices," says LaVallee, artists and community beaders, all who have taken beadwork to a very high level."

The show, so inventively and eclectically curated, covers so much ground, from the inherent strength and joy of so much Indigenous history and culture to the absolutely harrowing. It bravely and maturely and unstintingly addresses themes and issues of colonization and intergenerational trauma but it is also celebratory and filled with humour, with one of the pieces interpolating the face of SpongeBob SquarePants.

Even the cross-section of material choices for the beads in the pieces adds to the representative nature of Radical Stitch.

Glass beads, of course, became prominent after contact and trade with settlers but Indigenous beading using shells, stones and other materials predates that by possibly thousands of years.

One of the strongest piece in the show, at least to me, is Catherine Blackburn's large work - a diptych of sorts - on fabric depicting her braided hair growing together and cut apart in a powerful mix of media and photography with a hauntedly colourful dappling of beads.

The beads represent bruising," says Blackburn, born in Saskatchewan of Dene and European ancestry and a member of the English River First Nation.

It (the fabric in the piece) is deerskin draped on the body. It is a representation of family history. My mom and all my aunts and grandfather came out of residential schools. It also represents survival and resilience." She says she started as a fabric artist but beads appear in her work.

My grandmother mentored me (in beadwork)," she says. It is a telling detail of the chain that beads draw between people.

There is so much else in this show, featuring the work of more than 30 artists, that it is impossible to do more than here than hint at its impressive breadth and visual dynamism. There are works by such talents as Samuel Thomas with ornately beaded cushion, pillow and purse shapes and Joyce Growing Thunder with Horse Mask" and so very much more.

The whole exhibition, which originated at the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina, seems to vibrate with colour, line and shape, and never shies away from the challenge of its themes.

Help yourself to multiple visits. Radical Stitch will reward you.

At the Art Gallery of Hamilton to May 28.

Jeff Mahoney is a Hamilton-based reporter and columnist covering culture and lifestyle stories, commentary and humour for The Spectator.jmahoney@thespec.com