Using art to take on war

Rebecca Belmore’s performance piece — Making Always War — was featured during her Jan. 27 discussion at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery.
“At that time (2008) I believe the dead soldiers count in Afghanistan was climbing close to the 100 mark,” said the Lac Seul artist who represented Canada at the Venice Biennale in 2005. “That was kind of what I was thinking about, the idea of how we ... are continually making war.”
The performance piece featured Belmore nailing six Desert Storm shirts from an army surplus store onto a piece of salvaged West Coast timber while powwow music played from her pickup truck’s speakers at an outdoor plaza at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
“Here I was, an Anishinabe outside my own territory and in Coast Salish territory, hammering nails into a piece of Douglas Fir and creating my own version of a totem pole,” Belmore said.
Belmore did the performance piece as part of a two-week residence on campus with graduate students at UBC.
“Instead of a giving a lecture to the student body, I created a performance piece on campus because I was trying to show to them that you can make an artwork anywhere, anytime, any place,” Belmore said.
Belmore spoke about her performance work as part of a special evening at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery, which also featured well-known Canadian authors Alistair MacLeod and Nino Ricci.
The three were involved in Sense of Place, a cross-border show on exhibit at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery from Jan. 13 to Feb. 26.
Belmore also described Victorious, another performance piece she performed in 2008, during her talk.
Victorious involved the construction of a throne and period dress of Queen Victoria around a seated Aboriginal model using strips of newspaper and honey while music played in the background, including the British national anthem, God Save the Queen.