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Are You My Mother

Are You My Mother, (2021 at the WAG)

About the installation: 2021 Governor General Award-winning artist Lori Blondeau re-mounts a rarely shared and affecting performance, Are You My Mother. Drawing from her mother’s experience at residential school and stories that her mother told her, the performance is developed based on the memories of smell, home, and being in a sterile institution. Feelings of isolation and physical distance are grounded with Blondeau’s whittling of the poplar as the cut-offs fall to the green flooring, the smell of poplar is imagined.

 

Artist

Lori Blondeau

Lori Blondeau is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in performance and photography. She is Cree/Saulteaux/Métis from Saskatchewan. Her mother is Cree/Saulteaux from George Gordon First Nation, located in Treaty 4, and her late father was Métis from Lebret, Saskatchewan. Blondeau holds an MFA from the University of Saskatchewan. In addition to her extensive exhibition history she has sat on the Advisory Panel for Visual Arts for the Canada Council for the Arts. Blondeau has exhibited and performed nationally and internationally, including at the Banff Centre, the Mendel Art Gallery, in Saskatoon, Open Space, in Victoria, and FOFA, in Montréal. In 2007, Blondeau was part of the Requickening project with artist Shelley Niro at the Venice Biennale. She recently had a solo exhibition at the Urban Shaman Contemporary Aboriginal Art Gallery, in Winnipeg, and was part of the Scotia Bank Contact Festival, in Toronto. Her art is held in both public galleries and private collections.

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2 thoughts on "Are You My Mother"

Nancy Hartling says:

I was deeply moved by the work of Lori Blondeau.
Her creative work engages her audience and teaches us about Indigenous people.
Senator Nancy J Hartling, New Brunswick

Chris Prosser says:

That was a beautifully told part of history, but also heart breaking story of truth. ♥️

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