Colleen Cutschall
House Made of Stars
INTRODUCTION
Colleen Cutschall's work as both artist and educator has largely been directed towards creating awareness and understanding of Native culture and mythology between Native and non-Native communities. Cutschall is situated among many Native thinkers for whom a reinstatement of old forms is an important way to maintain the cultural integrity of her people. The center in Cutschall's art may be her ancestral history, but her work has acquired a universal character. This universality proclaimed by the artist is a result of an effort at synthesis, union, and fusion of elements from the most diverse geographical, historical, and cultural horizons on the planet with which the artist has entered into contact not only through study but by personal experience.
House Made of Stars is a multi-media installation combining painting with sculptural installations. Based on Aboriginal stellar knowledge, a worldview connecting human and cosmic forces, the work draws on precontact and historic Plains architecture including dwellings and sacred structures within a larger context of community and cosmological order. Aboriginal structures incorporate conceptually much of the natural world and its significant forms, i.e. mountains, lakes, and unique forms on the landscape. Art historians and anthropologists have articulated diagrammatic and ethnographic descriptions of the Plains culture's structures and world views. Ceremonial structures and dwellings were and to some extent still are, in use as microcosmic reflections of the universal order, the macrocosm, according to specific cultural world views.
In this exhibition, Cutschall uses depictions of traditional dwelling and ceremonial structures of the Northern Plains Aboriginal culture in two- and three-dimensional forms to explore spiritual aspects of traditional culture and the role these structures play in connecting earth-bound life to the larger system of universal order. At the same time, the work speaks to political issues, such as the legal and cultural conflicts surrounding Aboriginal sacred sites.
In House Made of Stars Cutschall transforms socially symbolic events and seeks in the process to address multiple constituencies. Articulating the relations between private and public knowledge and therefore between the individual and the community, she is engaged in a kind of cultural syncretism that acknowledges but withholds in an absolute sense, certain traditional native formations of power. Her desire is to reclaim the past and shape the future.
Cutschall was artist-in-residence in l992 at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. This exhibition is a result of the research explored prior to and during her residency.
I would like to express my appreciation to Colleen Cutschall for the energy and committment she has put towards this project. It has been a pleasure to work with her. In addition, I would like to thank Ruth Phillips and Allan Ryan for their contributions to the publication which are insightful and informative, and opened new doors to the viewing experience.
Shirley J.-R. Madill
Curator, Contemporary Art & Photography
Winnipeg Art Gallery
|
