Spafford Books

The work of the Mishomis of contemporary Indigenous art comes to Regina

hannah eiserman

arts editor

Many Faculty of Arts students take Art 100 to fulfil part of their degree requirements, and I’m sure many will remember a few key works from that course, for better or for worse. I know I could do without the memory of Marcel Duchamp’s urinal piece, cheekily entitled Fountain (1917), for example. On the other side of the spectrum, being an artist from that course I remember for the best of reasons, is Norval Morrisseau, whose work I have admired ever since.

Miskwaabik Animiiki (better known as Norval Morrisseau) was an Anishinaabeg artist, a residential school survivor, and has been called the Mishomis (grandfather) of contemporary Indigenous Canadian art. I hesitate to mention that he was a residential school survivor, as that aspect of his biography has been overly sensationalized particularly by settlers, but I do think it’s important to know when viewing his work. He is known for painting in bright colours and with a particular style.

When the press release for the Mackenzie Art Gallery’s exhibit Power Lines came to my inbox, I was positively thrilled. I have thought about Morrisseau’s work for years since first encountering it in that Art 100 classroom and was so excited to get to see it in person. But his work was even more magnificent than I expected it to be.

One of Morrisseau’s most famous works, “Androgyny,” is hanging at the top of the stairs on the way up to the gallery. It slowly comes into full view as you climb the stairs, and once you get to the top, you are completely immersed in it. I knew it was a large painting, but I was not prepared for just how large it really is. It was simply breathtaking and completely consuming. I could have spent my whole visit lost in the sunrise-like shape of it. I was actually nearly moved to tears, but a security guard popping up like a whack-a-mole to greet me pulled me out of the moment – though I’m sure I wouldn’t be the first or the last person to openly weep in the halls of the Mackenzie.

The exhibit is only one room

of the gallery, sharing space with the collections Community Watch and Beyond the Stone Angel: Artists Reflect on the Deaths of Their Parents, which were also both stunning. I had the privilege of experiencing the exhibit by myself – there were no other patrons inside when I visited. The room felt very full, between the energy radiating from the artwork and the boom of Morriseau’s voice from a speaker overhead. The speaker is curiously placed, so I found I couldn’t understand what he was saying until I stood directly in the middle of the gallery, which was clever, as it put the listener in a precarious spot: to be watched.

When I entered the gallery, I immediately noticed that all eyes were on me – literally. The eyes of Morrisseau’s figures stared directly at me, followed me where I went, and were actually quite disturbing. Part of this I attributed to my positionality as a settler: coming into a gallery of intimate work depicting Morrisseau’s wife and child, sacred Anishinaabe characters, and his variations of Biblical characters felt like trespassing. I wouldn’t say this feeling completely quelled by the end, but I

certainly felt more welcomed into the space once I noticed that the work demanded extra respect and care from me as a spectator.

The quality I love most in Morrisseau’s work is how he depicts the spirit world, which is why three of the largest paintings in the exhibit were my favourites. Though I was completely terrified by “Shaman Astral Guide I” and “Shaman Astral Guide II” and their aforementioned intense and unflinching gaze, I started to feel a surrendering deep within myself while looking at them. The two paintings are massive, stretching over halfway to the ceiling. If these two figures were really coming to take me into the spirit world, there would be nothing I could do about it but accept it. Talk about a memento mori.

I also adored Morrisseau’s “Mother Earth.” As one may guess from his famous piece “Androgyny,” many of the figures Morrisseau depicts are very androgynous, and Mother Earth was no exception. The backdrop is bisected into yellow and blue, representing both day and night and land and sea simultaneously, and Mother Earth herself is bisected too. I noticed the right

side of her body has a breast, and the left doesn’t, which I thought symbolized a balance of masculine and feminine energies. And of course, “Androgyny” was a favourite of mine before I saw the exhibit.

Seeing Morrisseau’s work in real life was a very different experience than viewing it in photographs. Of course, this goes for any piece of artwork: being able to see the brush strokes inches from your face revolutionizes the experience. The exhibit brought out aspects of his work I hadn’t noticed before. Since the eyes felt like they were watching me, I paid more attention to them. They were so much more mournful that I remembered.

I also noticed how violent and dark some of the subjects of Morriseau’s paintings were. He’s known for his colourful depictions of spiritual beings, but many of his paintings were actually on brown paper with natural toned acrylic. Those were the darker paintings, ones that were occasionally grotesque and bloody, like “Onaman Beaver Blood Legend” and “Man Beset by Leeches.”

I noticed these darker aspects present in the colourful pieces too, like in his depictions of Christ, Adam and Eve, and even “Shaman Astral Guide I” and “Shaman Astral Guide II.” The intense gazes were part of this, of course, but I found Morrisseau’s depictions of Biblical figures displayed in and amongst figures of Anishinaabeg culture and stories even more unnerving. It was while looking at these Biblical depictions that I was reminded of the fact that Morrisseau was a residential school survivor and knowing a bit about the weaponization of Catholicism in those schools weighed heavily on me.

Balance and symmetry are so key to Morrisseau’s work, as is the concept of a “circle of life,” which are all represented in his paintings, from the structure of “Androgyny” to “Adam and Eve.” This is why I remarked earlier that the exhibit is smartly set in a square room instead of a hallway like the other two exhibits. It moves the spectator in a circle through the paintings, through that unsettling feeling of being watched, through Morrisseau’s pain and joy, and out the other side. I came out feeling transformed.

Hannah Eiserman A photo of the sign for Power Lines, an exhibit that actually contains no power lines.

“Balance and symmetry are so key to Morrisseau’s work, as is the concept of a “circle of life,” which are all represented in his paintings, from the structure of

Androgyny to Adam and Eve.

– Hannah Eiserman

The Amazing Devil’s new album absolutely Ruins our A&C writer

jorah bright arts writer

Do you ever find something that speaks to the very essence of who you are so deeply that it engraves itself into your very bones and refuses to let go? Something that seems to call to you in the dead of night when you have yet to accept that you are truly and completely alone? When you stand on the threshold between submitting to the fact that you are irredeemable and holding out hope, just for one more minute, that you can still be good? If you’re like me and relate to all of that, let me introduce you to the Amazing Devil.

The Amazing Devil is a band composed of Madeleine Hyland and Joey Batey. You may recognize Joey Batey as the “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher” guy from Netflix’s The Witcher. The genre of their music is described as lyrical alt-folk – or what I like to call it, emotional catharsis. Many of The Amazing Devil’s songs are written by Batey and performed and produced by both Batey and Hyland. On top of that, Batey performs many of the instrumentals for the songs. They released their first album, Love Run, in 2016.

I discovered The Amazing Devil in the spring of 2020, and to say I am a different person because of their music would be an understatement. When I first heard their second album The Horror and the Wild, I finally had a moment of quiet. All the panic and all the thoughts in my head stopped just for a moment, just for the music that cut through it all.

They released their third album, Ruin, on October 31, 2021. Within the last month since the album has been released, I have not listened to a single song that is not on that album. If Spotify Wrapped didn’t stop counting in November, I would’ve broken mine.

Despite listening to this album for over a month, I still don’t know all the words. And even the words I do know come up with new meaning, new context, and new feeling every time I hear them. I certainly don’t know what all the lyrics mean – but also, it feels like there’s a piece of me, deep down, that I buried a long time ago, that knows exactly what each word means. There is a piece of me that tries to dig up its own grave every time I listen to their music, and I let it – because when I hear the songs, how could I stop it?

The album opens with “Secret Worlds.” It has a steady drum beat and a melody that makes you want to scream alone in the woods. It’s a perfect opening to make you feel transported into the world of Ruin. It has the energy of a child who fought so hard to climb to the top of the tree to call out to the world that they did something impossible, only to fall and shatter; and who, after they shattered, wasn’t the same child anymore and they carried the weight of all their pieces until they were an adult.

Next up is “The Calling” – my first cry of the album, but certainly not my last. It’s hard to encapsulate the overall ouch factor this song has, but it is a good

hurt. I spend a lot of time burying my feelings because I’m afraid of who I might be when I let myself feel, but this song breaks down all of those boundaries. It creates this rare safe space that allows me to feel without consequence. I have spent the last month haunted by the lines “I tried, I really fucking tried” and I encourage you to also spend your time haunted by those

words.

The next one is fun. It’s called “Drinking Song for the Socially Anxious.” Parties are scary and give me major anxiety and “Drinking Song for the Socially Anxious” encapsulates that perfectly. It has a needed balance to the tears shed right before “The Calling.” and the lines “I don’t

find this easy like you” are pure brilliance. The number of times people have told me that talking to people is easy is unmeasurable, and to hear the absurdity of that statement so clearly reflected was immediate catharsis.

Have you ever felt like no matter how hard you try you are destined to fail, and the universe has predetermined this outcome for you? Introducing the next song on the album, “Blossoms”: I listen to this song every day. Do I know what it’s about? No, absolutely not. Does the line “as I make myself acquainted with the saint of never getting it right,” punch me in the gut every day? Yes, and I still listen to it every day. The very essence of who I am vibrates in tune with this song when it plays. I have never experienced the same feeling that I do when I listen to this song at any other point in my life and I do not believe I ever will.

I’m going to keep my review of “Chords” very brief because if I think too deeply about this song, I will sob. I’ve already cried twice writing this. The song is about children growing up and leaving their parents’ home. It is good. It is so good. There are so many emotions and I just need you to trust me on how good it is.

The penultimate song of Ruin, “The Old Witch Sleep and the Good Man Grace,” is a total of nine minutes long – and it is nine minutes of divine glory in song form. It starts as this soft ballad and then it lets loose. It feels like a prison built of bones shattering. It is beautiful, it is haunting, it is powerful, and it is freeing. There is so much power in every word, in every sound, in every glorious second of this song.

The chorus says, “You are in the earth of me / My head’s not yours it’s mine,” and may I respectfully say, holy shit? And for a double holy shit moment: “You’re brave because they broke you. / Yet broken, still, you breathe.” It feels like taking an icepick to a mountain and hitting the exact spot needed to cause an avalanche. Broken things can still work. It seems like the opposite of the definition, but broken things can still work. And this song screams it into the marrow of my bones and refuses to let go.

There are two remaining songs on Ruin: “Ruin” and “Inkpot Gods.” “Ruin” is currently sitting at my most played song on Spotify and “Inkpot Gods” is my personal favourite song from the entire album. And that is why I will not spoil it for you, dear reader.

Take all of these songs as they are, come up with your own interpretations, but allow them to take you on a trip and trust that you will not be the same when you return.

Ruin is an album about rejecting who you are and yet accepting the change you are going through. It’s about hope for who you become and creating your own legend. It’s about believing that those around you are enough, and maybe, just maybe, eventually believing it about yourself, too.

The Amazing Devils The Amazing Devils in the forest – and they definitely don’t look like they’re going to murder you.

“When I first heard their second album, the Horror and the Wild, I finally had a moment of quiet. All the panic and all the thoughts in my head stopped just for a moment, just for the music that cut through it all.