TUKIEN (AWAKEN)

NELSON WHITE

August 15 - September 17, 2020

Nelson White’s portrait paintings document and celebrate kin. Tukien (Awaken) maps an extended community of artists, creatives, activists, and leaders who defy simple and singular understandings of contemporary Indigenous life. The exhibition title Tukien a Mi’kmaw word meaning awaken, evokes a collective raising of consciousness, a state of being “woke”. 

Portraying prominent and accomplished Indigenous women and men using the conventions of traditional European portraiture White decolonizes a medium, painting, that has often furthered colonial imperialism. With bright colours and lush brushwork White undermines one-dimensional understandings of Mi’kmaq people and their lived realities. White’s paintings are powerfully resonant in a province, where: joining confederation was predicated on the erasure of Indigenous personhood; the story of the abduction and death of an Indigenous woman is foundational to common understandings of history and culture; and, stereotypical portrayals of Indigenous men frame the provincial coat of arms. The pop-like style of White’s portraits contributes to this aspect of subversiveness in the context of Ktaqmkuk or Newfoundland, but are ultimately a secondary affect to White’s fundamental effort to celebrate an Indigenous renaissance rooted in the west. 

Born on the West Coast, in the community of Flat Bay, Nelson is a member of the Qalipu Mi’kmaq First Nation Band. He attended the Visual Arts program at the former Bay St. George Community College, before graduating from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. His paintings are included in public and private collections across North America, including the provincial art collection of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. His father, Calvin White is a respected elder, past elder-in-residence at Grenfell Campus, and significant Indigenous activist, who was inducted into the Order of Canada as well as the Order of Newfoundland in recognition of his lifetime of championing the rights of Mi’kmaq in Newfoundland and Labrador. 

Grenfell Art Gallery gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts, ArtsNL, Grenfell Campus and Memorial University of Newfoundland.