Sonny Assu

Sonny Assu’s exhibition at Urban Shaman, an Aboriginal artist-run gallery space located in Winnipeg, is a bolder foray into political territory than the Laich-Kwil-Tach (Kwakwaka’wakw) artist has shown previously. The collection of 53 posters and prints aspire to educate with methods rooted in propaganda strategies. Although the artist cites techniques from World Wars I and II and the communist era as inspiration, this connection is more rooted in ideas of mis/information than the illustrative flourish associated with Soviet TASS posters. Bold colours showcase several genres of print culture from gig posters to slick advertisements appropriating brand campaigns; a tactic captured and expanded upon in the 1990s by the Vancouver-based culture-jamming magazine Adbusters. This proliferation and immediacy of content departs from the layered and nuanced political commentary found in Assu’s previous projects such as “Longing,” 2011, and “1884–1951/Disposable Wealth,” 2008. While the exhibition is intended as a provocation, its primary medium of the poster as a call for action delivers some mixed messages.

A number of posters in the exhibition originated from a series displayed in and around Vancouver. Assu’s “Reconciliation,” 2014, was one of several artworks commissioned through the Public Art Program that was part of the city’s reconciliation initiative executed June 21, 2013 to June 20, 2014. These posters were installed in bus shelters throughout the city and captured attention through psychedelic Formline shapes sculpted in heavily saturated blues and oranges, over a vague landscape. Paired with the word reconciliation were various combinations of inspirational action words: teach, honour, hope, lead, learn and rise. Despite the variations on display in the gallery, the scale and significance of the original project feels lost, and the posters approach the role of documentation arrested in the gallery space.

Another commission, from the Burnaby Art Gallery, is a series that lends the exhibition its title at Urban Shaman and is presented next to the introductory wall text. These 12 images are part of a larger series, “The Happiest Future,” and align with the Canada-wide Idle No More movement: a resistance to economic programs that exploit natural resources and continue to marginalize Aboriginal sovereignty. Based on the font and colours of Shepard Fairey’s now iconic HOPE posters that defined the 2008 Barack Obama presidential election campaign, Assu’s “There is Hope if We Rise,” 2013, offers a more instructive register than hope with directions such as resist, confront, teach and lead. This appropriation of political imagery is an informed nod to the medium of print and its currency of mobility. During “The Artist Poster Show” held February 8 –April 7, 2013, 1,200 posters were distributed by the Burnaby Art Gallery free, with another limited edition of 25 available for sale.

Other digital prints from the “Happiest Future,” 2012, series quote Duncan Campbell Scott, the deputy superintendent of Indian Affairs from 1913–1931. Scott’s statement, “The happiest future for the Indian race is absorption into the general population, and this is the object of the policy of our government,” is slightly abbreviated in Assu’s poster, but the impact of the sentence remains. A series of 10 colour combinations of the print are displayed with identical text and ovoid forms, exhausting the range between low and high contrast. These formal binaries are echoed across the space of the gallery with another quote by Chief O’waxalagalis from 1886. Part of the “Strict Law,” 2014, series, they alternately state: “We will dance when our laws command us dance; we will feast when our hearts desires to feast; and if you come to forbid us dance be gone; If not, you will be welcome to us.” and “Do we ask the white man, Do as the Indian does? Let the white man observe his laws; and we shall observe ours.” Small “admit one” tickets break up the text of the poster with the dates of the Potlatch Ban instituted from 1884–1951 to contextualize the piece.

This cross quote installation pits the viewer between two conceptual binaries of power that subvert a clear origin story. In his artist’s statement for the “Happiest Future” Assu states, “It’s a simple matter of education. Canadians need to take the time to learn the true hidden history of Canada.” On the one hand, the quotes polarize histories: oral traditions of smothered language and culture versus a bureaucratic archive of policies, bills and acts. While on the other, the poster—an undeniable tool of visibility—demands attention to these alternate archives that interrogate an idea of a unified national history.

For the artist, who has referred to the significance of materiality in his practice in the past, the posters mark a measured shift in accessibility and potential for activism in their dissemination. How this medium will factor in future exhibitions, series and projects, both within and outside commercial and artist-run gallery spaces, remains to be watched. ❚

“There is Hope, If We Rise” was exhibited at Urban Shaman Gallery, Winnipeg, from May 2 to June 7, 2014.

Courtney R. Thompson is an arts writer living in Winnipeg.