Belkin Art Gallery Collections Management System : Item : Pell-tsqwéqwyem̓c (((THE FUTURE IS INDIGENOUS))), from Affirmations for Wildflowers: an Ethnobotany of Desire [BG6286]

Physical Description

Medium: mirror
Support: –
Dimensions: 193.7 cm 76.5 cm 3 cm (Object)
Object Description: Pell-tsqwéqwyem̓c is the Secwempemtsin name for the wildflower Indian Paintbrush.

Positioning audiences to consider their capacity for collective self-reflection, Tania Willard’s Affirmations for Wildflowers: An Ethnobotany of Desire (2020) is an installation work that uses representation of flora and political affirmations (“the revolution has come,” “the land is strong,” “the future is Indigenous”) to evoke shifting relations in this moment of change. Reflecting a desire for transformation, Willard’s work calls upon the qualities and lessons from wildflowers, current socio-political climates, longstanding Indigenous rights movements and the power of seasonal shifts on the land. As Willard states: “noting the order of the blooms of wildflowers in my territory and their attendant beauty, edibility and healing properties as well as the effects of their colours on the land and in an emotional landscape these works attempt to project affirmative value onto others. Invested in the blooming resistance within an equilibrium of health and relationality to lands, these works seek to reflect a complex time while projecting the affirmation of seasonal cycles of blooming wildflowers.”

Collection: Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery Permanent Collection
Credit Line: Purchased with support from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Morris and Helen Belkin Foundation, 2023
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