The exhibition will reflect art histories as they reside within the homes and belongings of those who, Suzanne Morrissette, grew up around. Morrissette will work with her brother Clayton Morrissette for the first time in an exhibition context to consider how exchanges between artists and their family members produce knowledge about history. The exhibition will explore what constitutes Indigenous art histories and how Indigenous peoples are often made to fit within existing disciplinary knowledge. Morrissette reflects upon her relationship to research and the practice of making a “contribution to knowledge,” as is often referred to within academia, while also noticing the historical tendency within the disciplines she’s worked in to view embodied or community-based knowledge as somehow less rigorous or valid.
"What does good work look like? This is a question I am asking about how we evaluate what has been learned and whether what has been learned and then what has been determined to be right, has also been heeded. But what are the rubrics of this evaluation? As an artist I am developing this body of artwork to think about this question from the perspective of my family and our home, and our pasts and futures as people who come from Indigenous and settler histories. It is here where I am brought to consider how I can contribute in a good way to future-thinking which foregrounds the brilliance of Indigenous people while simultaneously tending to the ongoing impacts of profound injustice. This exhibition is a reflection upon the act of imagining these futures from within the context of climate catastrophe, ongoing colonial violence, and inequities and familial tensions exacerbated by the global pandemic. The question asked by this exhibition aims to develop tools for evaluating the successes of endeavours towards good work from within values rooted in a sense of futurity that is sometimes personal, sometimes shared, and always dynamic."
- Suzanne Morrissette
For more information read What Does Good Work Look Like? Suzanne Morrissette with Clayton Morrissette an essay by Researcher Taylor Wilson. View digital project catching up cont. by Suzanne Morrissette and Clayton Morrissette and related programming on G44 Digital.
Presented in Partnership with CONTACT Photography Festival
Suzanne Morrissette (she/her) is an artist, curator, and scholar who is currently based out of Toronto. She is guided in this work by her roles as a daughter, partner, mama, sister, niece, aunt, granddaughter, friend, and colleague. Her father’s parents were Michif- and Cree-speaking Metis with family histories tied to the Interlake and Red River regions in the area now known as Manitoba. Her mother’s parents came from Canadian-born farming families descended from United Empire loyalists and Mennonites from Russia. Morrissette was born and raised in Winnipeg and is a citizen of the Manitoba Metis Federation.
Clayton Morrissette is Suzanne Morrissette's older brother. He is a musician from Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Taylor Wilson is a Winnipeg-based researcher and has been building a career in Indigenous community research and evaluation for nearly ten years. Taylor is an Ojibwe, Cree, and Filipina woman from Fisher River Cree Nation and has connections to Fairford, Peguis, and the Ilocano region of the Philippines. She currently works at the University of Winnipeg teaching Indigenous Studies as well as on various contracts evaluating programming for and by Indigenous communities. When not working on projects or teaching, Taylor spends time reconnecting with her family, community, and culture along with working to build a good future with her partner of eight years, Suzanne’s nephew, Clayton.
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