Featured picture: "Danielle Moonstar aka Mirage", 2021, 51" x 33"
Giant Sized Spectacular #3 and #4, 22 1/2" by 14", 2017
Until October 9th, Equinox Gallery is showing pictures from Sonny Assu, an interdisciplinary artist and graduate from Emily Carr University. The exhibition shows his collages of Marvel comics with super-imposed Indigenous iconography.
With thanks to his artist site:
Born in 1975, Sonny Assu (Liǥwildaʼx̱w of the Kwakwaka’wakw Nations) was eight years old that he discovered his Liǥwildax̱w/Kwakwaka’wakw heritage. Later in life, this discovery would be the conceptual focal point that helped launch his unique art practice.
He's recently returned to an exploration of pop-culture as a way to not only express my identity as a purveyor of pop, a watcher of sci-fi, and a collector of nerdy things, but as a way to find a cathartic experience in the breaking of my childhood memorabilia. Through this, he's finding a new understanding of the attribution wealth by the deconstruction of something sacred to create something new.
The Marvel comic content only came to focus when I stood close, and the added overpainted shapes were more clear when I stood afar.
Marvel comics as collector's items defaced, devalued, repurposed, enhanced, covered with what seemed very familiar shapes from indigenous traditions. I wished I knew more about these, so could relate them... then again do we have to classify and name in order to appreciate? Perhaps not, and perhaps it was okay to just enjoy the colours and flowing shapes.
"The impetus behind my work is to bring to light the dark, hidden history of Canada's actions/inactions against the Indigenous people. I often infuse my work with wry humour in an attempt to foster a dialogue; to speak to the realities of being an Indigenous person in the colonial state of Canada.
Within this, my work deals with the loss of language, loss of cultural resources and the effects of colonization upon the Indigenous people of North America."
Text from: SonnyAssum.com
Exhibition at Equinox Gallery, Sept 11-October 9 2021
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