Curatorial Statement: Salt. Washing. Beuys. Fat. Royalty. Copper. Canadian Club. John. Locked. Bear. Drum. Circle.

Abstract

The image included on the cover of this journal is from Tahltan artist Peter Morin’s performance, Salt. Washing. Beuys. Fat. Royalty. Copper. Canadian Club. John. Locked. Bear. Drum. Circle. The image portrays Morin being suffocated by a rye-soaked British flag while kneeling in front of the Macdonald statue in Kingston. This action, one of many taken by Morin during the performance, evoked the continuing erasure of Indigenous cultures in Canada and the stifling of Indigenous presence by assimilative forces. Kneeling in front of Macdonald, Morin connected ongoing Indigenous suffering to the Prime Minister and, more broadly, to the construction of Canada as a British colonial nation. Despite the pain of the action pictured here, through further performative actions Morin repurposed the statue into a pirate broadcasting station. Morin invited audience members to hold copper pipes to the statue’s base. He then spoke and sang into the pipes, allowing his voice to be brought up through the pipes and through the statue into the air and across the universe. Morin’s words and song communicated resilience and sovereignty to Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island and to the ancestors. In this action, and throughout his performance, Morin briefly removed the power of the colonial symbols of the statue and Prime Minister, and instead used them for his own voice. Through this repurposing of colonial iconography, Morin truly spoke back to John A Macdonald.