AUCTION DANA CLAXTON

Dana Claxton is an internationally recognized artist whose work in photography, film, video, and performance art explores social and political issues, as well as spiritual and cultural life. Her work is held in public and private collections, including the Vancouver Art Gallery, the National Gallery of Canada, the Seattle Art Museum, and the Audain Art Museum. She resides in Vancouver on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, and is a member of the Wood Mountain Lakota First Nation located in Southwest Saskatchewan. Claxton has received numerous awards, including the VIVA Award (2001), the YWCA Women of Distinction Award (2019), the Scotiabank Photography Award (2020), and the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts (2020).

Claxton’s photographs often juxtapose Indigenous traditions and contemporary Western imagery to reflect on the legacy of colonialism. Study for a Protest 2 features two female figures who were part of Re/Matriate, a collective dedicated to the positive representation of Indigenous women in media. This pose, in which the two women are walking together, was inserted into another work by Claxton, Muckamuck Strike Then and Now (2018), which speaks to the 1978 Union protest against Muckamuck Restaurant. By hand-colouring the ribbons in the skirt and the beaded art on the necklace, Claxton emphasizes the placement of these contemporary figures into a moment in history. In doing so, she forms a trans-generational link between Indigenous women of the past and present.

Study for a Protest 2

2016, inkjet print

Edition 1/3

90 x 72 in, 228.6 x 182.9 cm

Framed

Value $34,500

Donated by the Artist

Lot #07