From Aotearoa to Tiohtià:ke
Kaia’tanó:ron Dumoulin Bush (left) and Melanie Tangaere Baldwin (right) are co-curators of a new exhibit at daphne, an Indigenous-led art gallery in Montreal. Ella Paulin The Eastern Door
When the COVID-19 pandemic forced the daphne art gallery’s beading circle Canadato move online, no one could have guessed it would have led to two international exhibitions and a new network of relationships between Indigenous artists working in Canada and New Zealand.
While moving the beading circle online had its drawbacks, it also provided new opportunities: the team at daphne could invite artists living an ocean away, including the Māori women behind New Zealand’s HOEA! Gallery.
Over the course of the pandemic, these weekly sessions helped build a deeper relationship between the two galleries, which has now come to fruition in the form of a collaborative exhibit hosted first by HOEA! and now by daphne. The art on display was created by a mix of Aotearoa (New Zealand) artists and Indigenous artists from across Canada.
The exhibit’s co-curators, Melanie Tangaere Baldwin from HOEA! and Kaia’tanò:ron Dumoulin Bush from daphne, hoped to give artists from both communities a chance to think about what it would mean to explain your identity to someone from a completely different background.
“How do you introduce yourself across such a great distance? And so, we thought, flags, and then we were like, artists, what would you consider to be your flag?” co-curator Tangaere Baldwin told The Eastern Door. “If we put this in front of somebody, then they would know who I am.”
The exhibition was first displayed at the HOEA! Gallery in Gisborne, New Zealand, back in 2023, and is now being shown at daphne through August 1. The second show includes many of the same artworks, as well as some that are displayed for the first time.
“For the first iteration of the show, I had to fit all of the work into my carry-on,” said Bush. “So, the work from Turtle Island artists is a bit different just because we could have work that was a little bit less portable.”
For example, Bush’s own carved chair, which is meant to symbolize the suffering children experienced in residential schools, is only displayed in the daphne exhibition, having been too large to bring to New Zealand in 2023. Megan Feheley’s two large birch bark tarps, which showcase Cree birch bark biting patterns cut into orange tarps, are also displayed for the first time as a complete set at daphne.
Both Tangaere Baldwin and her mother came to Montreal for the show, meaning that there are two full suitcases of work from Aotearoa artists on display in the new exhibit.
Carrying art across an ocean in personal luggage was a labour of love for the co-creators, who said the process has showed the strength of the connection between the communities, the galleries, and the curators themselves.
“We’ve both tried really hard to put a good representation across, and part of that representation is our relationship to each other,” said Baldwin. “If we were trying to win, or trying to outdo one another, the whole show would fall down.”
In Montreal, daphne organized a variety of events around the opening of the gallery. On July 7, Bush and Tangaere Baldwin led a walk around Mount Royal intended to think through connections to water ways and mountain ranges, as well as a flag-making workshop on July 9 inspired by the exhibition’s theme. There was also a “Stories and Legacies” conversation with Baldwin’s mother, Lilian Tangaere Baldwin and daphne’s director Lori Beavis.
When Bush first went to New Zealand in 2023, she participated in another series of events, including a visit to their local total immersion school. She said the trip has stayed with her.
“It was so beautiful and so special, but it also felt like I was just going down the highway a couple miles over,” said Bush about her trip. “It just felt so much like home - even our fry bread is the same.”
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Beavis expressed her satisfaction at seeing this shared exhibit complete its journey in Montreal.
“As we’ve grown, we’ve spread out in different ways. We’ve had a Native Hawaiian artist, we’ve had a Cherokee artist who lives and works on the West Coast of the United States, and now we’ve had this exhibition, where first of all, Kaia’tanó:ron went to New Zealand, and now we’ve brought the New Zealanders here” Beavis said.
“At Daphne, we’ve just come into our seventh year, so it feels like we’re standing on our feet in a really good way, but also like we’re reaching out and looking outward as well.”
