en-ca SC0291-RAR-PH-1.1

en-ca Newnham - Building D - Level 2 - Hallway right of Room D2000

en-ca Arthur Renwick (b. 1965)

en-ca Mask Series: Rebecca

en-ca 2006-2009

en-ca Photography

en-ca Archival inkjet print.

en-ca 116.8 x 111.8 cm

en-ca In his artist’s statement, Renwick describes the new portraits as “…more than humorous, a body of images that depicts a culture alive, reactive and very comfortable with challenging and mocking the norm.”

en-ca Galleries West

en-ca “…this history (the representation of First Nations people) includes a pseudo-anthropological quest to document ‘vanishing’ cultures, in which artists often staged their images to make their subjects look ‘more authentic’ to the romanticized European concept of the Indian. Renwick’s Mask series intervenes in this history of misrepresentation by allowing First Nations artists and curators (Renwick’s subjects) to stare back through the lens and respond to it.” (Lynn Beavis)

en-ca “The portrait series is a departure from my previous work in multimedia landscape photography. These large color prints document First Nations people who have come up against cultural assumptions about their heritage throughout their careers. Whether they are archaeologists like Michael White, hired to excavate bones in a suburban residential development, or actors like Fernando Hernandez, who played a Mayan shaman in Mel Gibson’s film they have all had to combat prevailing stereotypes in order to establish and retain their own identity. During the portrait sittings for I initiated a dialogue with my subjects, seeking their thoughts on the notion of identity. To undermine historic Indian portraiture, I invited the sitters to look into the lens and make a facial gesture. The results are fresh and often startling images that are neither stoic nor noble.” (Arthur Renwick)

en-ca The Mask Series comprises close-ups of Native artists, writers and intellectuals who have been asked by the artist to stare into his Hasselblad and reconfigure their faces as masks. “I asked the people I photographed to look into the lens and think about the history of the camera and its relationship to the stereotype of the Indian, then make a facial gesture,” says Arthur Renwick. “

When I first showed these images at Leo Kamen Gallery, you could tell that people were really uncomfortable, all these larger-than-life Indians staring at them with distorted faces.” Furthermore, some of Renwick’s subjects became unrecognizable even to friends and family “just,” Richard Hill notes, “as the history they are reacting to created an image of First Nations people alien to themselves.”

Renwick navigates between contemporary art’s ongoing relationship with self-portraiture (think of Chuck Close and Bruce Nauman) (David Phillips, Seneca Polytechnic)

en-ca Purchased from Leo Kamen Gallery. Purchase made possible through the generosity of First Peoples @ Seneca.

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Seneca Art