Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Red Runners

Red Runners is exploring First Nations Identity through the use of a common object.  This is a group show featuring 14 First Nations artists of diverse background and media.  They will, to coin a phrase, allow us to walk a mile in their moccasins.  While their stories are different they come from a similar place, for these reasons we chose the running shoe as the common object. redrunners re design

This is my first curatorial project, the exhibition co-curator is Jason Jenkins, we are being mentored by Robert Houlerobert houle and Bonnie Devine.bonnie devine  

The organization we are working for is the Miziwe Biik employment and training corporation and the project is funded by the Ontario Arts Council. miziwe biik logo oac

When we started this project we were given some parameters for the project; the exhibition had to be accessible to the common native person, it wasn’t suppose to be to “artsy” but not too kitsch.  And we were told to think outside the box, these parameters don’t seem too restrictive but it was actually quite hard to come up with a solution.  Jason is of mixed heritage so he wanted to explore that theme and I was pretty open to any theme as I figure the idea is to get curatorial experience.

As a part of a series of  workshops facilitated by Robert we went to the Bata shoe museum to see the exhibition “Beauty, Identity, Pride: Native American Footwear”.ex-beauty-cherokee_200w-2 ex-beauty-lakota_200w   This show had traditional foot wear from all over North America and I felt the footwear told the stories of the people who they created them and who they created them for.  I have also been interested in running shoes as artworks  for quite a while, having been a reader of Juxtapose magazine for many years.louie gong   I never imagined we could re-imagine runners as a medium for the expression of First Nations identity.

2 comments:

  1. beautiful work..you guys should contact nike or one of the larger shoe companies and see if they would do a small run production

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  2. Your work is great! I'm here because you "watched" me on Twitter (skeenastormston). Saw your art on the shoes and that made me think of Mike Dangeli (Nisga'a). He's located in Vancouver, don't know if you know of him, in case you don't here's a link to his Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/search/?post_form_id=1b38f3aa63b3d38d3fda8c92d26cb804&q=michael&init=quick&ref=search_preload#!/mike.dangeli?ref=ts I hope it works. He did some traditional art on a skateboard for a show. Your shoes reminded me of that - what a combination - your shoes, his boards.... He's a great guy, enthusiastic about his art and culture too. Best wishes,
    Shelby

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