Sick and Tired / Paper Bag Princess
February 3 – 25, 2006
Exhibition, Performance Art, Artist Talk
About the Program
The Sick and Tired/Paper Bag Princess exhibition was comprised of works by Adrian Stimson and Terrance Houle. Stimson's Sick and Tired installation contained three windows from Old Sun Residential School on Siksika Nation that the majority of the artist's family attended, filled with feathers and back lit, and an old infirmary bed from the school with a bison robe folded into a mummy shape and placed on the bed springs. The work explores the familiarity of these objects' past, present, and future, and asks if the memory that these objects hold can be transcended. Houle's Paper Bag Princess was based on the theme of the Paper Bag Indian suit that kids used to make in elementary school. The work was set up like a classroom with a blackboard and desks. In one of the desks was a mold of a little girl, made from a cast of the artist's 10-year-old niece, wearing a paper bag dress from a grocery bag adorned with coloured cutout feathers and paint. On the desk sits a dictionary open to the page giving the definition of an "Indian Giver." The blackboards also contained definitions of phrases like, "Indian file," Indian club," and "Indian corn." The work comments on the education of Indigenous people within the Canadian school system, Indigenous identity, tokenism, and critiques the idea that Indigenous people still live in the past.An artist talk was presented on opening night and a Talking Stick Cabaret performance in association with Full Circle's Talking Stick Festival occurred on February 4, 2006.
Writer
Daina WarrenCurator
Daina WarrenIdentifier
2006.0203 SICCollection
grunt gallery Programming ArchiveLocation
grunt gallery (second location)116-350 E. 2nd Ave, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V5T 4R8
Unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ/selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations
In copyright. For uses beyond Fair Dealing, research requests, corrections, takedown requests, or other inquiries, please contact grunt gallery: archives@grunt.ca
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