{"id":22223,"date":"2022-03-10T09:00:41","date_gmt":"2022-03-10T17:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=22223"},"modified":"2022-03-09T09:37:47","modified_gmt":"2022-03-09T17:37:47","slug":"new-exhibit-explores-potlatch-culture-through-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2022\/03\/10\/new-exhibit-explores-potlatch-culture-through-art\/","title":{"rendered":"New exhibit explores potlatch culture through art"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whess Harman’s chew the bones, they\u2019re soft<\/em> exhibit is in Harman’s own \u201cpotlatch punk\u201d style, which incorporates their own work with collaborations with other local Indigenous artists. Harman says the inspiration for their artwork comes partly from their complex interaction with the concepts of home and identity.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of [my ideas] are about home and yearning, and I wouldn\u2019t say that I\u2019m estranged from my community, but it\u2019s a bit of a difficult place to navigate as someone who\u2019s queer and the town I come from is pretty small and pretty conservative, and I know I\u2019d have a hard time living there,\u201d says Harman. \u201cMost of my work has been about this push and pull of wanting to go home, but knowing it\u2019s not necessarily going to be the thing I want.\u201d<\/p>\n

A major theme of the show is that of exploring the potlatch from a historical and contemporary perspective.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Artist Whess Harman (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s our government; it\u2019s how people gather and make the collective community decisions, but it was also important as a social event,\u201d says Harman. \u201cAnd sometimes someone has a better year than someone else, so it\u2019s a way of redistributing resources and making sure everyone has something, rather than hoarding it, essentially.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harman says that the nation-wide ban on potlatches, which spanned from 1885 to 1951, had a profound impact on Indigenous culture because it outlawed a practice that embodied and pervaded every aspect of how the native Canadian peoples ran their societies.<\/p>\n

\u201cPotlatches are so interesting, because they\u2019re governance, they\u2019re culture, they\u2019re art, they\u2019re social; like it really is the nexus of everything about who we are, so to take that away was such a huge blow to so many communities,\u201d says Harman. \u201cThat was 66 years where we didn\u2019t get to explore our own culture freely, we didn\u2019t get to innovate, we didn\u2019t get to be flexible and move with the time in the same way, and I think we are starting to move back to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

An Emily Carr University graduate, Harman says that they don\u2019t agree with the idea that art has to prescribe to a strict style.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the frustrating thing I had coming out of a post-secondary program was this idea that contemporary art had to be perfect and polished, and look very manufactured in a particular way, and I think that\u2019s really intimidating,\u201d they say. \u201cIt\u2019s like, if you have an idea, it doesn\u2019t have to work out, what\u2019s actually more important is to just try it and see if you like it. A lot of my projects, they\u2019re a little messy, and you can see the mistakes, and I\u2019m happy to share those mistakes as a way of signalling that you can do this, and there is value in it, and there\u2019s value in the mistakes, and relearning and reapproaching the work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Regarding the title of the exhibit, Harman recalls a childhood memory that stuck with them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first time I was conscious of eating fish, I just remember asking my mom, \u2018Can I eat the bones?\u2019 which is just such a morbid sounding thing, but she just laughed and said, \u2018Yeah, of course you can eat them,\u2019 just very warm and tender about it,\u201d says Harman. \u201cWhat I would really like is to just offer that invitation to someone, to be like, yes, absolutely, chew on the thing that is tough.\u201d<\/p>\n

chew the bones, they\u2019re soft<\/em>
\nUntil Saturday, April 30
\nOpen Space
\nopenspacearts.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whess Harman’s chew the bones, they\u2019re soft exhibit is in Harman’s own \u201cpotlatch punk\u201d style, which incorporates their own work with collaborations with other local Indigenous artists. Harman says the inspiration for their artwork comes partly from their complex interaction with the concepts of home and identity. \u201cA lot of [my ideas] are about home […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22224,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,265],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-march-9-2022"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22223"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22256,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22223\/revisions\/22256"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}