{"id":62883,"date":"2019-08-09T14:00:26","date_gmt":"2019-08-09T19:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artmur.com\/artists\/nicholas-galanin\/theyre-threatened-by-your-survival\/"},"modified":"2023-05-09T11:13:14","modified_gmt":"2023-05-09T16:13:14","slug":"theyre-threatened-by-your-survival","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/artmur.com\/en\/artists\/nicholas-galanin\/theyre-threatened-by-your-survival\/","title":{"rendered":"They\u2019re Threatened by your Survival"},"content":{"rendered":"
September 7 \u2013 October 26, 2019
\nOpening reception: Saturday, September 7, 2019 from 3-5 p.m.
\nNicholas Galanin: They\u2019re Threatened by your Survival
\nArt M\u00fbr Montreal, QC<\/p>\n

Text by Nathalie Agostini<\/p>\n

Nicholas Galanin\u2019s first solo exhibition in Montreal combines sculptural works, multimedia installation and photographic prints from 2012-2019. A sharp observer of a broadly assessed contemporary culture, Galanin works around themes of resistance, the land, and a history of survival through language, resilience and creation. Through his multidisciplinary practice, the artist at once sheds light on the critical issues that divide nations and communities, and on the human practices that bind them.<\/p>\n

Stemming from a long line of artists, Galanin, who is of Tlingit-Unangax\u0302 descent, was trained in the traditional techniques and imagery of Tlingit and Northwest Coast art, as well as in Western contemporary art and aesthetics. Certain works serve to testify that, just as weapons are technologies designed with the aim of enabling survival, so tools, in craft and cultural production, are fundamental to the preservation of culture. From the hatchets referring to territorial destruction (Unceded, Monument of a Nation, both 2018) to replica carvings splintered apart (Unceremonial Dance Mask, 2017), Galanin both honours his heritage and explores new perspectives that reach out onto questions of land, (self-)identity and (self-)portrayal.<\/p>\n

The artist engages with the political, social and cultural implications of contemporary identity in both Indigenous and non-Indigenous contexts, for instance critically questioning classifications of imposed (in-, sub)humanity. \u201cStereotypes and romanticization of Indigenous people are rooted in centuries-old justifications for genocide which have been continued via blood quantum and ethnicity based on percentage,\u201d Galanin wrote in 2018.1 \u201cWe are the only community in the United States whose blood percentage is monitored to determine if we are registered with the Bureau of Indian Affairs by a number.\u201d Galanin\u2019s self-portrait from 2019, a diptych of a torn photograph in which one side of his face is swollen and bruised, plainly addresses the issue of blood quantum and its associated violence,2 after the artist James Luna\u2019s half-portraits.<\/p>\n

As a stark contrast to such dehumanizing tactics, Galanin\u2019s work speaks of broad human practices, like touch and connection through language (Survival Exercises, 2017, in collaboration with Merritt Johnson). The video work, showing a loop of layered imagery of embracing bodies, suggests that \u201cphysical, emotional and cultural survival\u201d can be borne through human contact, intimacy and, broadly speaking, family and community, particularly following violence. Galanin tells stories of creation, intrinsically linked to the land and to communities. As the critic Jerry Saltz observed, Galanin\u2019s work in the 2019 Whitney Biennial \u201cnails the malign aberrations of what\u2019s happening with whiteness in America as well as what all information turns into right now, as the ice near Galanin\u2019s Alaska melts.\u201d3 The final thought \u2013 now that the ice near Alaska\u2019s shores has melted away completely \u2013 resonates through Galanin\u2019s works like a bell that the communities on the front line of the climate crisis have heard tolling, and been warning of, for generations.<\/p>\n

1. Nicholas Galanin, \u201cOut of Line: Nicholas Galanin Rejects the Traditional \/ Contemporary Binary,\u201d March 26, 2018, Walker Reader, walkerart.org
\n2. Blood quantum is the measurement used to define bloodlines defined by ancestry. With regards to people of indigenous descent, the notion of blood quantum was created to track racial ancestry, and was enacted in laws that restricted their rights. Blood quantum laws remain a most divisive and highly controversial issue today.
\n3. Jerry Saltz, \u201cThe New Whitney Biennial Made Me See Art History in a New Way,\u201d May 14, 2019, Vulture, vulture.com<\/p><\/div>\n

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