Bonus Paintings!

Nina Chanel Abney:

The role of politics, race, power, and sexuality are at the heart of much of Abney’s work. Her recent solo exhibition, Always A Winner, directly addressed police brutality and the #Blacklivesmatter movement in America. Her work pulls from contemporary politics and pop culture and addresses them through a practice of absurdly exaggerated forms, anti-realism, and an adamantly  pop aesthetic. Her sensibility pulls from a vast mix of sources ranging from South Park to Romare Bearden. –Project for Empty Space

Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun – an artist of Coast Salish and Okanagan descent, graduated from the Emily Carr College of Art and Design in BC. Influential as both artist and activist, Yuxweluptun merges traditional iconography with representations of the environment and the history of colonization, resulting in his powerful, contemporary imagery; his work is replete with masked fish farmers, super-predator oil barons, abstracted ovoids, and unforgettable depictions of a spirit-filled, but now toxic, natural world. -http://moa.ubc.ca/portfolio_page/lawrence-paul/

Yuxweluptun’s strategy is to document and promote change in contemporary Indigenous history in large-scale paintings (from 54.2 x 34.7cm to 233.7 x 200.7cm), using Coast Salish cosmology, Northwest Coast formal design elements, and the Western landscape tradition. -http://lawrencepaulyuxweluptun.com/

He gets angry about missing and murdered aboriginal women and the role played by residential schools in dismantling indigenous culture. He thinks National Aboriginal Day on June 21 should be declared a national holiday on par with Victoria Day. He also thinks there should be a referendum on a new name for British Columbia that recognizes aboriginal sovereignty. One of his suggestions is Traditional Native Territories.

Yuxweluptun has even come up with a term to describe the effect of settler culture on indigenous people: he calls it “colonial stress disorder syndrome.” From http://vancouversun.com/entertainment/local-arts/lawrence-paul-yuxweluptun-the-indigenous-history-painter-of-modern-life