For our Decolonizing IDEA project, Alison, Sophie and I created a travelling pop-up gallery that featured contemporary Indigenous artists. This fictional gallery, sponsored by Fazakas Gallery, BC arts council and the Vancouver Art Gallery would be put in public places.

The goal of the project was to encourage self-motivated learning and interest in indigenous culture and art. We called it REgeneration to highlight how we as a society could heal and build relations with the Indigenous peoples of Canada through art.

We created this gallery because there has not been much space dedicated to contemporary Indigenous artists in mainstream galleries. In the last decade, out of the hundreds of exhibitions they have run, the Vancouver Art Gallery has created 4 only exhibitions completely dedicated to Indigenous artists. This was troubling as we still stand on the unceded territories of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam first nations.

We also felt as though creating this gallery was important because the general public’s perception of Indigenous peoples’ art was very traditional. While it is important to treasure and respect traditional art, exhibiting contemporary art created by Indigenous people would highlight the more current concerns, joys and frustrations they experience.

Since the beginning of the conception of this project, we wanted to incorporate words that had the prefix “RE”. Words such as Redefine, Reclaim and Reflect were assigned to artist who showed those values through their art.

We created:

• Sketches for the gallery installation structure
• The Panels of information and images for the installation
• A microsite for information and promotion of the gallery
• Promotional posters advertising and announcing the gallery
• Promotional Instagram posts

In terms of self evaluation, I would give myself and the group an 8/10. This is because we had a couple bumps in the road towards the completion of our project, but we managed to pull through. While we managed our time well given our situation, our decision making process could have been much better. Our final design also erred on the safe side, though we wanted to create something more impactful. However, I believe our concept was strong and we managed to make everything cohesive and effective.