Indigenous artist’s exhibition now open at Deer Lake Gallery

It is not every day that an artist invites visitors to their exhibition to touch the artwork, but that is exactly what Mi’kmaq artist Alanna Irene Edwards invites everyone to do when they enter Deer Lake Gallery to visit her exhibition.

The exhibition and residency, titled “where I’m from” reflects on concepts such as the meaning of art, access to cultural knowledge, and art as a collaborative effort among generations. Edwards will host two art-creation workshops open to visitors of all ages on July 13 and 14 from 12pm to 4pm. 

“Part of this exhibition is talking about the access to cultural knowledge. I wasn’t raised in Mi’kmaq territory. I was raised here on the West Coast,” Edwards said. “This exhibition is about the knowledge that I have and what I’m going to do with it. It’s ok not to have that knowledge, too; I just have to move forward.” 

Collaboration is a key theme that runs through the artworks in the exhibition. When visitors enter the space, to their left, they can see a large black felt blanket hanging on the wall with motifs of fiddlehead ferns bordering its edges. According to Edwards, Mi’kmaq art often includes the double curves and unfurling of the fiddleheads, which can be interpreted as the beginning, middle, and end stages of life and how it all circles together. 

On a small table beside the blanket, there is an assortment of colourful pieces of felt fabric, scissors and pins, inviting visitors to think about the natural surroundings of the gallery, important elements in their histories and lives and to cut out a small shape and add it to the blanket. The resulting work of art will be a piece visitors contributed to, expressing their many histories, lives, and visions in one larger piece, uniting them all. 

Facing the blanket is a curtain of clay beads hanging from threads. Some are painted red; others are in the natural grey colour of the clay. This is a particularly important piece to Edwards, who created it with her father. 

“The central focus of this exhibition is a collaboration between me and my dad. My dad has had some health challenges in the past while, and now, some days, he’s finding he’s losing sensation in his hands. So I really wanted to work with my dad and use our hands in ways where the art isn’t too hard on him and something that he can do.”

The beads are her way of paying homage to her grandmother’s crochet and beadwork, and Edwards will be adding more beads to the work throughout the exhibition and residency.  

“My aunt gave me her [Edwards’ grandmother’s] last piece of beadwork, and it’s this crocheted thistle design, and in it, she had little red seed beads,” Edwards said. “I find making art now is a way to connect to my dad, to connect to my grandma, and to share a bit about my own perspective and experiences because we can only talk about our own experiences.” 

The works also combine serious, playful, and light-hearted elements to art. Edwards, who works at Surrey Art Gallery, often teaches children about art. 

“Art to me is serious, but not so serious at the same time, and working with kids too, I try to get across that anyone can be an artist,” she said. “We all have this knowledge inside of ourselves, and it’s up to us to bring it out. Art can be fun, it can be humorous and it can be joyful too. So that’s what I’m trying to say with my art.” 

One eye-catching artwork in the centre of the exhibition is a basket woven out of lottery scratch and win tickets. The strips of lotto tickets catch the light and sparkle with various colours, and the small basket is filled with tiny clay eggs. Edwards said she started this piece in 2019, which took her many months to complete. 

“I was thinking about the relationship of Indigenous people with gambling, casinos, and those sorts of institutions. We all have our personal opinions and experiences with them. This is just my way of saying that I put all my eggs in one basket. Just making a little bit of a joke about it, but at the same time it’s kind of serious,” she said. 

Everyday accessible materials are another essential element of Edwards’ art. A coil of copper electric wire her father gave her hangs on one wall. During the exhibition, she intends to strip the wire and turn it into jewelry pieces. 

“It’s interesting what everyday materials can do. With lotto tickets there’s this everyday material that’s also a little wasteful in terms of you’re wasting your money and throwing out this material.”  

Art was not originally Edwards’ career choice. After graduating from SFU with a bachelor’s degree in political science and women’s studies, she was still unsure what she wanted to do. At the time, she was still working at a fast food restaurant when one day, her colleague, who was studying fine arts at Langara, invited Edwards to her graduation show. 

“The next day, I went to Langara and signed up for the fine arts program. So I went to Langara, and then I transferred to KPU,” she said. She eventually obtained a bachelor of fine arts degree from Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) and soon started working at Surrey Art Gallery. 

Although Mi’kmaq originally, Edwards grew up in the Lower Mainland. The traditional territories of the Mi’kmaq people are in the Atlantic region of Canada. There are large Mi’kmaq communities in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Quebec and in the Maine and Boston areas. Edwards said she learned a great deal from Coast Salish friends and artists here on the west coast.

“A lot of Coast Salish artists and people here who have been really wonderful to me in so many different ways,” she said. 

Across the exhibition space, a small blanket made with buttons and felt pieces faces the large blanket. Edwards made it when she was only six years old and said the little blanket is in conversation with the big blanket. It is as if her younger self and adult self are reaching out to each other across this space and collaborating together and with others to create a new piece of art.  

This piece was made possible by the Local Journalism Initiative.

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