Repository Number
en-ca SC0106-FVA-MM-1
Location
en-ca Newnham - Building E - Level 2 - Room 2403E
Artist
en-ca Vanessa Dion FletcherVanessa Dion Fletcher
Title
en-ca Relationship or Transaction
Date
en-ca 2014
Medium
en-ca Mixed Media
Dimensions
en-ca 97.5 x 390 x 2.5 cm
Artist's Statement
en-ca “For thousands of years, Indigenous people along the Atlantic Coast and in the Great Lakes regions made wampum beads out of whelk and quahog shells. The beads were woven into belts as mnemonic devices recording treaties, historical events and personal social transactions. In 1764, Sir William Johnson gave the Western Great Lakes Covenant Chain Confederacy Wampum Belt to the representatives of the 24 First Nations who attended the signing of the Treaty of Niagara. In my reproduction of this belt, I used $5 bills as the quahog (purple) beads and replica $5 bills as the whelk (white) beads. I used Canadian currency as a weighted symbol of the power of the nation-state, encouraging the viewer to consider the colonial dimensions of Canadian society and, in particular, the role of money in bypassing and dissolving nation-to-nation treaty relationships.”
en-ca Resilience Project
Description
en-ca "As a commentary on historical colonial relations, Dion Fletcher created a work titled Relationship or Transaction (2015), a replica of a Western Great Lakes Covenant Chain Confederacy Wampum Belt made out of Canadian and counterfeit $5 bills in place of traditional purple and white beads. For the Lenape peoples, Wampum belts were exchanged to symbolize a treaty or relationship between nations. The artist replaced beads with contemporary Canadian currency to provoke dialogue about the -fraught relationships between First Nations and the Canadian government around treaty rights and colonization."
en-ca Esse
Provenance
en-ca Purchased from the artist.
Inscription
en-ca No signature
Item sets
Seneca Art