Myre photos ©Nadia Myre, licensed by CARCC, Ontario and VAGA, New York.
Opposite:
Sonya Kellilier-Combs
Small Secrets,
2009,
detail, walrus stomach,
human hair, mixed
media, dimensions
variable.
Above:
Sonya Kelliher-Combs
Salmon l-Valrus Family
Portrait,
2009-10,
acrylic polymer, walrus
stomach, reindeer fur,
mixed media,
67V3 x 39%
in.
“pores” or piercing them with metal grom-
mets, the last suggesting human domina-
tion of nature. This work is about “making
things our own, ownership and control,”
she has said.
Unlike Kelliher-Combs, Nadia Myre
(Anishinaabe), an artist living in Montreal,
does not use organic materials to comment
on skin. Her preoccupation is scars, and
more than half of her part of the exhibit
is devoted to
The Scar Project,
a communal
work. Since 2005, Myre has held work-
shops in which she provides participants
with 10-inch-square canvases and invites
them to render their own scars—bodily or
mental—by cutting and “suturing” the raw
cloth. The 240 canvases (out of some 500 in
the project) are arranged on both sides of
a large gallery. Although much of the work
seemed primitive as sewing, the cumulative
effect is powerful and visually harmonious
because of the nearly monochromatic ef-
fect-beige, white and light brown threads
against the off-white canvas. What might
have been presented as bloody wounds or
disfiguring stitches are abstracted, even
aestheticized, by the subtle colors. Another
work,
Landscape o f Sorrow,
also of canvas
and cotton thread but done by Myre alone,
is a grouping of six horizontal canvases,
each depicting a long scar through a slit in
the canvas “healed” by irregular stitching.
The theme continues in
Scarscapes,
sev-
eral small rectangles made from glass beads
and cotton thread, each with the central
image of a black scar against a white back-
ground. On the wall nearby are greatly en-
larged photographic images of details of the
beaded works. Such pieces indicate Myre’s
pride in her Native heritage and its beading
tradition. Such pride is conveyed in a more
visceral way in
lnkanatatation,
a short digi-
tal video documenting the artist having her
arm tattooed in a design of three red feath-
ers. It is meant to suggest an alteration in
the Canadian flag-the replacement of the
maple leaf with feathers—as a way of honor-
ing the country’s aboriginal peoples. With
its mingling of red ink and blood, this film
returns the “ouch” factor to what has been
presented at a remove in Myre’s scar instal-
lations, and reminds the viewer that skin,
real skin, is the subject of this exhibition.*
The catalog is $23.
aug/scp 10 american craft 033
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