Rebecca Belmore to unveil major new public artwork at Ottawa's National Arts Centre on July 6
Vancouver-based Anishinaabekwe artist has conjured ode to Indigenous women’s resilience from copper cones and wood
A detail of Dawn, the new artwork soon to be unveiled at the National Arts Centre.
INTERDISCIPLIUNARY ANISHINAABEKWE artist Rebecca Belmore will see the official unveiling of a major new public artwork, conjured from hundreds of copper cones, at the National Arts Centre on Wednesday.
The Vancouver-based artist’s sculpture Dawn, initiated and funded by Canadian art historian and philanthropist Reesa Greenberg, will sit permanently in the Ottawa facility’s new public Atrium O’Brien.
Belmore has said that Dawn, meant to symbolize NAC’s next half century, evokes early morning, “a beautiful time of day, full of hope after rest and dreams, a better day ahead of us.”
She created the large-scale artwork in Toronto, Vancouver, and Thunder Bay. Constructed from wood and hundreds of cone-shaped copper forms, the sculpture is meant to make a material connection to the land, with visual links to the NAC site. The work was inspired by the jingle dress, the regalia worn by women and girls at powwows, and it addresses the resilience of Indigenous women and the power of healing.
The commission process, which began in 2017, coincided with the NAC’s construction of a 60,000-square-foot wood-and-glass public atrium. It faces landmarks such as the National War Memorial and Parliament Hill. The creation of Dawn was repeatedly delayed by shutdowns caused by the pandemic and extreme weather events.
The visual-arts collection at the Ottawa institution has more than 30 pieces by the likes of Jessie Oonark, Micheline Beauchemin, Jack Shadbolt, William Ronald, Dempsey Bob, and most recently Emily Brascoupé-Hoefler.
Born in Upsala, Ontario, Belmore won the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2013, and earned a VIVA Award here in 2004. The following year, she became the first Indigenous woman to represent Canada at the Venice Biennale. She works across performance, video, sculpture, and photography, often confronting the ongoing history of oppression of Indigenous peoples in Canada. Among her other major public artworks is the 2013 commission Trace, at the Canadian Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg; the massive blanket is made out of more than 10,000 hand-molded clay beads and can be added to by the public. She's shown frequently at the Vancouver Art Gallery, including a major mid-career solo exhibition in 2008. She holds an honourary doctorate from Emily Carr University, as well as from the Ontario College of Art and Design University, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and the Université Laval.
Related Articles
