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Storied Land: (Re)Mapping Winnipeg

For the exhibition Headlines: The Art of the News Cycle, artist Miriam Rudolph dug through the Winnipeg Free Press archives. What came out of this exploration was the newly commissioned work Storied Land: (Re)Mapping Winnipeg, an artist’s book exploring the complex history of settlement and Indigenous erasure within our city.

Rudolph, a Manitoban artist who grew up in Paraguay, developed a similar printmaking project in response to the British Museum’s Paraguay collection entitled Layered Histories: Perspectives on Colonization from the Chaco. Initially, Rudolph struggled with how to approach the collection. “It consisted of entirely Indigenous artifacts that were collected at the turn of the century by a British Anglican missionary,” says Rudolph. “I come from a Mennonite background, and my community is also very missions-oriented toward Indigenous people. That’s a tension point for myself that I’ve always wrestled and struggled with. So, I thought maybe I’ll take the colonization and mission history as to how the artifacts came to be in the collection as a starting point for my work, and out of that, over the course of a year and a half, grew an artist’s book that explores the colonization and settlement history of the region.”

It was this work that led Riva Symko, Head of Collections & Exhibitions and Curator of Canadian Art at WAG-Qaumajuq, and the curator of Headlines, to invite Rudolph to create a similar series drawing on the history of Winnipeg through the archives of the Winnipeg Free Press. Beginning with research into the settlement of Mennonites within Manitoba, Rudolph found a cross-section of themes from the last 150 years where colonization history intersects in some form with Mennonite history. “For me, it was important to find the sources that also portrayed Indigenous perspectives,” she says. “A lot of those sources I couldn’t find in the Winnipeg Free Press directly, at least not in earlier issues.” As her research developed, Rudolph pursued secondary sources that highlighted Indigenous and Métis history, ensuring that her research and the resulting prints did not perpetuate the erasure of Indigenous voices from history.

The prints in Storied Land explore the history and controversies of Mennonite settlement history, the Canadian Pacific Railway relocation, Rooster Town, Freedom Road, and the creation of Naawi-Oodena. Rudolph utilizes mapmaking, satellite imagery, and grid layouts as metaphor, exploring Indigenous dispossession and colonial understandings of land. Winnipeggers are familiar with Rudolph’s work in mapping neighborhoods, as her prints are held in many private collections across the city. “I’ve always been interested in the mapmaking – that’s been part of my art practice for over a decade,” says Rudolph, having mapped parts of Winnipeg that she feels visually connected to through printmaking. “This project gave me the opportunity to get to know the history of the city more from the colonization aspect.”

While the texts trace the deliberate choices of dispossession and inequity that have had implications into the present day, Rudolph’s work includes the possibility of something better to come. The history of the city, reflected within the reporting done by the Winnipeg Free Press, is marked by slow shifts in public perceptions and attitudes towards Indigenous communities. “That’s a point of hope for me, to see the change in language that happens in the newspaper throughout the past 150 years,” says Rudolph.

Through her life, research, and artistic processes, Rudolph has been able to deconstruct and respond to the stories of colonization that she grew up with. “It’s been a process that has been happening over years,” she says. “The settler myth doesn’t quite add up with the reality that you see and experience.”

The series of prints go through a similar set of revelations, with a gathering strength visible in the Indigenous figures portrayed. Rudolph acknowledges that portrayals of Indigenous people by settlers have the potential to be problematic, and that the changing narratives and stories she draws on are victories that were hard-fought for by Indigenous people. “I will be really curious to also see how Indigenous and Métis people respond to my work and my representations of them,” she says. “I’m hoping it might be a point of conversation rather than a point of contention.”

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WAG-Qaumajuq recognizes that land acknowledgements are part of an ongoing dialogue with Indigenous Nations, and we are grateful to live and work on these lands and waters. Institutionally, WAG-Qaumajuq is committed to acknowledging our colonial history and we are actively working to interrogate the Gallery’s colonial ways of being.

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