Mobilize, 2015, Single-channel video, 3:00 min
Tshiuetin, 2016, Single-channel video, 11:00 min
Portrait of an Indigenous Woman, 2014, Single-channel video, 16:05 min
Online screening followed by a conversation with Winnipeg-based curator, scholar and artist Dr.Julie Nagam.
Mobilize guides a journey from the far north to the urban south that reveals the strength and skills of Native life in Canada by those who live on the land and are driven by the pulse of the natural world. Combining 16mm archival footage from the National film Board of Canada, the film explores the diversity and contradictions of Indigenous identity. Hands thread sinew through snowshoes. Axes peel birch bark creating a canoe. A master paddler navigates icy white waters. Mohawk ironworkers stroll across steel girders, almost touching the sky, and a young woman asserts her place among the towers. Reverberating to Tanya Tagaq’s Uja polar punk rhythms, Mobilize underscore the perpetual negotiation between the modern and traditional by a people always moving forward.
Tshiuetin captures the breathtaking train ride that travels through Northern Quebec and Labrador on Canada’s first-ever First Nations-owned railway. Filmed over the course of the two-day, 134-mile journey, Tshiuetin (which means “north wind” in Innu) interweaves the train’s daily activities with the train conductor’s own musings on Innu language and community. Set against the passing winter landscapes of northern Canada, the film celebrates the power of independence and the crucial importance of aboriginal owned businesses.
Portrait of an Indigenous Woman brings together ten women from across Canada, the US and Sweden to try and define what it means to be an Indigenous woman today. The resulting work (filmed during a residency at the Banff Centre of the Arts in Alberta) reveals honest conversations about constructions of identity, representation, and bicultural living in contemporary Indigenous culture.
Caroline Monnet is a multidisciplinary artist from Outaouais, Quebec whose works communicate complex ideas around Indigenous identity and bicultural living through the examination of cultural histories. She studied Sociology and Communication at the University of Ottawa and the University of Granada (Spain) before pursuing a career in the visual arts. Her work has been exhibited and screened internationally including: Palais de Tokyo (Paris); Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin); TIFF (CAN); Sundance (USA); Aesthetica (UK); Cannes (FR); Museum of Contemporary Art (Montréal); Arsenal Contemporary Art (NY); Walter Phillips Gallery (Banff); KADIST (SF); and the National Art Gallery (Ottawa). In 2016, she was selected for the prestigious Cinéfondation residency in Paris. Her work is included in numerous collections including Quebec Museum of Fine Arts, National Art Gallery, RBC Royal Bank, and Museum of Contemporary Art Montréal. Recent exhibitions include the Whitney Biennial and the Toronto Biennale of Art 2019. She is based in Montréal and represented by Division Gallery.
Dr. Julie Nagam (Metis/German/Syrian) is a Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Arts, Collaboration and Digital Media and is an Associate Professor in the department of Art History at the University of Winnipeg. She is the inaugural Artistic Director for 2020/21 for Nuit Blanche Toronto, the largest public exhibition in North America. Dr. Nagam's SSHRC research includes digital makerspaces + incubators, mentorship, digital media + design, international collaborations and place-based knowledge. She is a collective member of GLAM, which works on curatorial activism, Indigenous methodologies, public art, digital technologies, and engagement with place. As a scholar and artist she is interested in revealing the ontology of land, which contains memory, knowledge and living histories. Her artistic work has been exhibited internationally, including in Brazil, France, New Zealand, and England, which includes solo and group exhibitions. Nagam’s scholarship, curatorial and artistic practice has been featured nationally and internationally. She was the Concordia University and Massey University (NZ) Scholar in Residence for 2018/19, and will be the Terra Foundation Visiting Scholar at the University of Sydney (AUS) for 2021-22. Dr. Nagam is the Director of Aabijijiwan New Media Lab and Co-Director of Kishadigeh Collaborative Research Centre in Winnipeg, Canada.