5 Nov, '23 - 14 Jan, '24
In the Greg Yuel Gallery
Following her residency during the month of October, Holly Tennant’s exhibition, Blanche, shows the survival of Indigenous women, the Metis lived experience, and the rebirth of self. Named after the artist’s grandmother, Tennant hopes to bring good medicine to those who view her art, with this show consisting of previous works as well as new pieces created during her residency.
In the late 1920’s, Louisa Dreaver Chaffee, a recent widow, left Big River, Saskatchewan, with her two youngest children, Blanche and James. Louisa was a granddaughter of Chief Mistawasis, Treaty 6 head Chief. Her parents, James Dreaver and Marguerite Belanger, had occupied land parcel number 1 on the Isbister Settlement, an English Metis settlement that would become Prince Albert. In the aftermath of the 1885 Resistance, Louisa took Metis scrip and lost her rights to belong to her divided and uprooted native community. After thirty years of racism and suppression against the defeated half breeds, the far north village of Stony Rapids offered a chance to begin again in the old hunting and trapping ways. Holly will re-interpret family photos from the 1920’s through the 1940’s, using charcoal sketches, watercolours, collage, and digitally stylized photographs.
