Jane Ash Poitras

The works that make up “Linguistic Secrets,” Jane Ash Poitras’s recent exhibition, are mixed media paintings and a new “Fusion Box Series”—shadow boxes of ephemera and artefacts in wooden boxes. These assemblages, like her paintings, technically refer back to Poitras’s work as a printmaker. It’s a labour-intensive process with the artist often working experimentally, creating her own pigments and sources for colours, struggling with the hierarchies of the different grounds and planes within her compositions, layering the works with colour and meaning in order to make them “true.” Her works are meaning-full.

Einstein’s Unification is one of the new shadow box assemblages. Within it are found, among other things, a photo of Einstein, maps, a butterfly, a picture of a sand mandala and a miniature coffee grinder. It seems an eclectic accumulation of objects until the viewer is able to “decode” the symbolism of the items within—in effect, to release the linguistic secrets, since it is necessary to have knowledge of a number of different cultures in order to identify what is placed within the box. In the very background of this piece, on top of which everything else is arranged, is a fragment of blackboard with writing on it. This symbol has been often employed by the artist to indicate that there is a lesson to be learned and to remind the viewer that in life we are all still students. There are two maps, a larger one of Germany, also a portion of Europe, on top of which is placed a segment of a map showing a Navajo reservation. In this, Poitras is drawing parallels between cultural genocides—in one case, that of the Holocaust and, in the other, the decimation of Original Peoples and Cultures in North and South America. The work also has biographical significance in that Einstein, after leaving Germany, moved to the United States and spent a great deal of time with the Navajo. The experience helped to solidify his understanding of the relationship between the spiritual and the scientific worlds.

Amid the objects are different written languages—musical notations, scientific/mathematical formulas and Sanskrit. One grouping can be deciphered as having a very powerful and significant meaning for First Nations people. The butterfly, Aztec Sun-God symbol, turtle and shell are arranged in the order of the four directions, or the four elements from which all life comes. They correspond to air (butterfly), fire (Aztec symbol), earth (turtle) and water (shell). The objects on the bottom of the frame are more than decorative additions: a simple gold ring represents nature’s resources, a buffalo—hunted to the brink of extinction by European soldiers and settlers, an old coffee mill and a miniature adobe house, all remind us of technologies and ways of living that have almost been forgotten. Every inclusion is deliberate but the “language” must be known in order to understand the secrets within.

Pow Wow Mail is an almost overpoweringly intense painting. The colours are vivid and the main figure appears to be on the verge of breaking through the confines of the canvas. Added to the mix is a handwritten letter to the plant Foxglove, thanking it for the gift of its medicine. There are stamps depicting different historic and cultural events and examples of now-extinct wildlife and animals. The work is anchored by a fragment from an article in the Globe and Mail. The article describes the loss of 60 Aboriginal languages. It’s highlighted by a red circle, like a bull’s eye, in case anyone misses it. The inclusion of a five-dollar bill suggests that money or commerce determines what, or who, survives. Printed in ghostly lettering on one side is the word “echos,” a darkly ambiguous suggestion. It calls attention to the fact that none of this is new—people, cultures, languages, nature have been disappearing for centuries. And it hints at the ghostly remnants and whispers that are all that remain.

Interestingly, Pow Wow Mail, as well as Borrowed Headdress, are titles that her eldest son, Josh, came up with. Poitras does not create her work according to the notion of “solitary genius.” When she works in her studio, she rarely works alone. She creates the pieces but the process is interactive and, in one sense, the final result is something of a “community” effort. Often she has visitors—friends, family or collectors—and, as she works, she discusses her ideas and concepts, getting back their ideas and impressions. Ultimately, all the works are about the world, in which there are different voices and viewpoints, and her efforts to find means and ways of making the connections among them. Language is supposed to be about communication, and from understanding comes respect. But language can also be about specialties and exclusion. It is in the sharing and exchange of knowledge that “secrets” are revealed, and communication, true communication, and understanding can take place.

Poitras brings not just one truth to light within “Linguistic Secrets.” In the same way that she layers many applications of colour in order to get the “true” colour, she layers, metaphorically and visually, the truths and traditions of many cultures and generations. ■

“Linguistic Secrets” was exhibited at Feheley Fine Arts in Toronto from September 23 to October 15, 2006.

Virginia Eichhorn is the curator at the Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery in Waterloo. She lives in Kitchener.