On Kimowan Metchewais: Identity, Community, and Colonial Memory | Aperture Conversations

After his untimely death at age forty-seven in 2011, Kimowan Metchewais left behind a wholly original and expansive body of photographic and mixed-media work. At the center of his practice is an extensive Polaroid archive, which addresses a range of themes—including the artist’s body, performative self-portraiture, language, landscapes, and everyday subjects—and served as the source material for works in other media, such as painting and collage. Metchewais’s exquisitely layered works offer a poetic meditation on his connection to home and land, while challenging conventional narratives and representations of Indigeneity.

In this Aperture Conversation, Rebecca Head Trautmann, Christopher Green, and Wendy Red Star, delve into the work of Metchewais in celebration of the first-ever survey dedicated to the late Cree artist, "A Kind of Prayer" (Aperture, 2023). Varun Nayar, assistant editor, Aperture magazine introduces the panel.

This event was recorded live on Wednesday, April 25, 2023.

Thumbnail Image: Kimowan Metchewais, “Indian Handsign,” Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1997. National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution

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Kimowan Metchewais (1963–2011; born in Oxbow, Saskatchewan, Canada) was a multidisciplinary Cree artist who began his artistic career working as an illustrator and editor at the Native newspaper Windspeaker. He later received his bachelor of fine arts at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, before completing his master of fine arts at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. In 1995, Metchewais received the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellowship to spend the summer at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, and in 1996, a national award from the Canadian Native Arts Foundation. At the time of his death, he was associate professor in the art department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Christopher Green is a writer and art historian whose research focuses on modern and contemporary Native American art and material culture. His work has appeared in Aperture, Artforum, Art in America, and Frieze, among other publications. He currently serves as Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History at Swarthmore College.

Rebecca Head Trautmann is an assistant curator of contemporary art at the National Museum of the American Indian and project curator for the National Native American Veterans Memorial. She curated the exhibitions Vantage Point: The Contemporary Native Art Collection (2010) and Making Marks: Prints from Crow’s Shadow Press (2013) and is a co-curator of Stretching the Canvas: Eight Decades of Native Painting (2020).

Wendy Red Star (born in Billings, Montana, 1981) is an Apsáalooke artist based in Portland, Oregon. Her work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions and is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art, New York; Brooklyn Museum; Saint Louis Art Museum; and IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe. Red Star guest edited Aperture magazine’s Fall 2020 issue, “Native America.”

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All artworks from "Kimowan Metchewais: A Kind of Prayer" (Aperture, 2023). Courtesy National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution

Thumbnail Image: Kimowan Metchewais, “Indian Handsign,” Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1997

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In this video:
0:00 Welcome from Varun Nayar
4:00 Introduction from Rebecca Trautmann
8:26 Wendy Red Star’s Introduction to Kimowan’s work
10:51 Christopher Green’s Introduction to Kimowan’s work
15:02 Background on Kimowan
20:00 Kimowan’s influence on Wendy’s work
27:57 Kimowan’s Traveling Exhibition through Aperture
39:39 Tobacco as both sacred & addictive
40:45 Cold Lake Series
43:26 A Kind of Prayer
49:09 Q&A: Influence of Romare Bearden?
50:30 Q&A: Why use Polaroids?
52:55 Legacy of Kimowan’s Writing
53:56 Closing Remarks

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