Decolonize Me by Heather Igloliorte, Brenda L. Croft, and Steve Loft (review)

Playing off the popular 2004 film Supersize Me, which followed filmmaker Morgan Spurlock’s thirty- day fast food diet, the catalogue Decolonize Me (Ottawa Art Gallery, 2012) inverts the passive stance uncovered by Spurlock’s exploration of North American consumption habits and calls on indigenous artists, writers, and activists to determine their place in contemporary society by decolonizing its institutions and methodologies. Heather Igloliorte (Inuit), an assistant professor of art history at Concordia University in Montreal, curated the exhibition, which featured the work of six indigenous artists: Sonny Assu (Ligwilda’xw), Jordan Bennett (Mi’kmaw), Cheryl L’Hirondelle (Métis/Cree/German), Nigit’stil Norbert (Gwich’in), Barry Pottle (Inuit), and Bear Witness (Cayuga). The catalogue presents the work accompanied by the artists’ statements in English, French, and the artist’s traditional language alongside essays by Igloliorte, Australian curator and writer Brenda Croft (Gurindji/Malngin/Mudpurra) and curator and art historian Steven Loft (Mohawk).

A rarity some twenty years ago when both the National Gallery of Canada and the Canadian Museum of Civilization presented Land Spirit Power and Indigena as critical responses to the Columbus quincentenary, exhibitions of contemporary art by indigenous artists have become regular features of Canadian public art galleries. Yet, such “soft” inclusions—to use the words of Lee-Ann Martin and Lynda Jessup—have not resulted in the revision of institutional practices that would produce the systemic changes necessary to begin decolonizing art institutions (i.e., curatorial departments, regular acquisitions, training, and revision of collecting mandates). While the artists included in Decolonize Me might be familiar from recent exhibitions, the catalogue essays bring a resoundingly critical perspective on the state of contemporary indigenous art in the twenty-first century.

Igloliorte’s opening curatorial essay sets the tone by asserting the importance of claiming indigenous identity and refusing to accept the tropes of hybrid, post-Indian, or transnational identities that erase the specificity of indigenous experience and histories. Indeed, a recurring theme across both the essays and artworks is the political necessity of claiming not only indigenous space—a call made exceedingly clear in Croft’s essay on Aboriginal struggles for recognition in Australia—but also indigenous voice. This voice can no longer be simply representational, an example of Canadian diversity. As Loft argues, privileging indigenous voice means building on traditional knowledge to produce methodologies and theoretical approaches that not only permit a full understanding of Aboriginal art making and thought, but also reverse the colonialist discourses that continue to shape museums and universities. Loft’s discussion of the centrality of decolonizing the art history discipline is especially pertinent here. He underlines the necessity of moving beyond soft inclusion within an existing canon, arguing instead that a decolonized art history requires a fundamental questioning of aesthetic values and analytical frameworks in order to build an indigenous art history that produces what he describes as “self-defining narratives of art and culture.” With its combination of politically sophisticated artworks and intellectually rigorous essays, Decolonize Me provides the beginning of a roadmap for such an important and necessary revision.