No I.D. Required - Panel Discussion
Participants: Jason Bareg, Chanelle Lajoie, Jessie Short and curator Liz Barron
Moderated by: Jack Saddleback.
Recorded: Saturday November 6 with Zoom
Length: 1:12:24
NO I.D. required considers how Indigenous two spirit artists are presenting the future within the context of their present and their past while revealing ways of thinking about what is to be. NO I.D. required brought together Indigenous artist from Canada to explore visual media stories within the context of two spirit diaspora.
NO I.D. required is an exploration of two spirit and the colonization of Indigenous two spirit. We look to extend the post-colonial explorations of identities and move towards exploring no identification required. It was in 1990 at the Third Annual Native American Gay and Lesbian gathering in Winnipeg, Manitoba, homeland of the Metis and Treaty One Territory, that the term Two Spirit was agreed to as the best way to describe their community using and adopting a colonized language, English. The term “Two (2) Spirit” acts as a bridge between Indigenous and non-Indigenous persons as an entry point for understanding queer Indigenous culture. Prior to contact, Indigenous peoples did not have a gender identity assignment. The identity of Two Spirit has a traditional social and ceremonial role within an Indigenous community, it is masculine, feminine, spiritual, and societal. The colonized language seems to push it to only gender and doesn’t incorporate all the layers of an identity that encompasses all those things and more. The roles within the Indigenous communities have been lost to colonization, however, as we come out from under the colonizers, Indigenous Two Spirit are taking back their roles and space within the community.
For the Indigenous who live, have lived, and are yet to live in two-spirit, this exhibition can provide both reflections and maps to unique cultures that thrive within the Indigenous landscapes. The work will stimulate viewers to reflect upon their own personal and public stories. These encounters and struggles are shaped by Indigenous legends, realities as well as a co-mingling of both fact and fiction.
NO I.D. required consists of exhibition with installation, an artist talk and in person presentation during the exhibition along with text on each artists’ stories, shared through social media. For the Indigenous who live, have lived, and are yet to live in two-spirit, this exhibition can provide both reflections and maps to unique cultures that thrive within the Indigenous landscapes. The work will stimulate viewers to reflect upon their own personal and public stories. These encounters and struggles are shaped by Indigenous legends, realities as well as a co-mingling of both fact and fiction.
Barron’s selected artists exposes personal and social histories that have contributed to two-spirit identity. Jason Baerg’s realist, new media portrait of his young urbanite life deliberately obscures his face and explores movement through land. Baerg’s “The Apology” reflects a time in our generation when, in the moment, in those 12 minutes, we were all one.
Short’s work “Wake Up!” explores their connection to Metis and questions engaging in the shared culture and history of Metis men. How can one explore identity when the history is of men? Short uses the film to create herself as Riel and adopts the identity of man. Will the transition be a guide or a hinderance to learning and adopting Metis culture? Where are the women?
Lajoie’s Métis Femme Bodies is an exploration into the experiences of what has become a repressed identity in both Indigenous and femme forms. Lajoie is a Queer Métis multi-disciplinary artist honoring, engaging, and amplifying the voices of their Indigiqueer communities through storytelling in the forms of printmaking, photography, and moving-image on Treaty 1 Territory, the lands of their ancestors.
Jessie Short
Jessie Short is a curator, writer, and multi-disciplinary artist and emerging filmmaker whose work involves memory, multi-faceted existence, Métis history and visual culture. Short obtained an MA degree in 2011 and an Undergraduate degree in 2006, and has also received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts council for her curatorial and film making practice. Short worked in the visual arts department at The Banff Centre for the Arts, and she also spent two years as the executive director of the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective in Toronto, Ontario. She is currently working on various contracts as a curator and documentary filmmaker.
Chanelle Lajoie
A dyslexic 7w6 who does not know her sun sign from her moon sign, Chanelle Lajoie is continuously striving to align her ethics, principals, and goals better than she does her posture. As a Queer Métis Femme living on Treaty 1 Territory, community building is Chanelle's medicine. Rooting and weaving her academic studies, work, and creative passions closely alongside her personal politics aids in merging the communities that reside in each.
Jason Baerg
Jason Baerg is an Indigenous curator, educator, and visual artist. Curatorial projects include exhibitions with Toronto's Nuit Blanche and the University of Toronto. Baerg graduated from Concordia University with a Bachelors of Fine Arts and a Masters of Fine Arts from Rutgers University. He currently is teaching as the Assistant Professor in Indigenous Practices in Contemporary Painting and Media Art at OCAD University. Dedicated to community development, he founded and incorporated the Metis Artist Collective and has served as volunteer Chair for such organizations as the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective and the National Indigenous Media Arts Coalition.
Creatively, as a visual artist, he pushes new boundaries in digital interventions in drawing, painting and new media installation. Recent international solo exhibitions include the Illuminato Festival in Toronto, Canada, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia and the Digital Dome at the Institute of the American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Jason Baerg has adjudicated numerous art juries and won awards through such facilitators as the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and The Toronto Arts Council. For more information about his work, please visit Jasonbaerg.com.
Liz Barron
Liz Barron, Metis, is one of three founders of Urban Shaman Gallery, an artist run centre devoted to Indigenous contemporary art, in Winnipeg. Barron has been working in the Indigenous arts for more than 25 years and explores the gap between Indigenous art and cultural connections. Her artistic and research practice centers on identity, place and visibility / invisibility with a focus on colonized language on identity. She maintains her emerging curatorial practice and past projects include programming for moving image festivals. She was part of the management team for Plug In ICA’s Close Encounters: The Next 500 years, the largest Canadian exhibition of International Indigenous artists in 2011.