Window Installation | Sept 29 - Feb 1, 2021 | L Space Gallery Window Display
Outdoor Installation | Ongoing | Outside the Student Welcome and Resource Centre
This summer and fall, local Métis artist Tracey-Mae Chambers is travelling across Ontario, visiting nearly 40 different galleries, museums, and cultural sites to reconnect the arts community with the environment. She communicates this powerful message through site-specific art installations of bright red string entwined and woven on location, as part of her ongoing project Hope and Healing. While each of her works are uniquely and physically adapted to their surroundings, they all pose the same question of connection between ourselves, others, and the world around us. Amidst the devastating effects of COVID-19, Chambers asks: “How do we pick up the pieces of our lives? Individually and collectively? How do we heal and stay hopeful?”
Humber Galleries, the Department of Indigenous Education & Engagement, and the Lakeshore Grounds Interpretive Centre are pleased to invite Chambers to Humber College’s Lakeshore Campus to assemble two in-situ installations, as part of Hope and Healing.
The colour red has often been linked to blood, danger, and anger. What’s more, the word itself has been used as a racial slur against Indigenous peoples, coined by early colonialists to identify a cultural inferiority and oppression. This summer’s recovering of the remains of Indigenous children buried in unmarked graves at former residential schools across Canada only heightens this reality, becoming another grim reminder of the injustices Indigenous peoples continue to face today.
But red also represents courage and love. This is the primary focus of Hope and Healing. While each iteration of this installation is painstaking work, Chambers believes it is worth every ounce of time and effort amidst these many months of local and global tragedy. Even though the project embodies a fractured society, it is the artist’s wish that it can also symbolize repaired connections between people, their communities, and the natural environment, so that we may all move towards a hopeful and brighter future.
Two installations will be available for public viewing at Humber College’s Lakeshore Campus this fall. The first installation will be temporarily hosted outside the Student Welcome and Resource Centre, after which it will be documented and then taken apart, with the intent of leaving no waste behind. The second installation will be featured inside the L Space Gallery’s exterior facing window and will remain on display for the entire Fall 2021 semester. Hope and Healing coincides with Humber College’s gradual return to campus, inviting new and returning students, staff, and faculty to pause and reflect on the upcoming National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on September 30, 2021. Please join us online to follow the installation process via our websites and social media channels.
Read more about this installation here: https://humber.ca/today/news/decolonize-decolonize-decolonize-artist-bri...
All images courtesy of Ismail Ali & Stuart O'Brien © Humber Galleries
About the Artist:
Tracey-Mae Chambers grew up as a stranger to her own story. At an early age, she was adopted and re-named, grafted into a new family tree. It was only into adulthood that her Métis culture was revealed, setting her on a new path of rediscovery. Today, the artist’s developing narrative as an Indigenous heritage woman coexists with her interest in the natural world, both of which inform her artistic practice.
Chambers’ work can be found in numerous public and private art collections across North America and Europe. She has been awarded several artist residencies, including the Artscape Gibraltar Point Residency in Toronto. Chambers is a proud member of the Métis Nation of Ontario, and her ancestors are from the Drummond Island community. She currently lives and works in Hamilton, ON.
In partnership with:
