Regina's MacKenzie Gallery one of select Canadian galleries hosting national exhibit
- EFN Staff | July 04, 2014
Today, the MacKenzie Art Gallery is hosting the official opening celebration of Beat Nation: Art, Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture. The MacKenzie Art Gallery is pleased to be one of the select venues for this nationally touring exhibition organized and circulated by the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Beat Nation: Art, Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture describes a generation of artists who juxtapose urban youth culture with Aboriginal identity to create innovative and unexpected new worksin painting, sculpture, installation, performance and videothat reflect the current realities of Aboriginal peoples today.
Since the early 1990's, hip hop has been a driving force of activism for urban Aboriginal youth in communities across the Americas. The roots of this music have been influential across disciplines and have been transformed to create dynamic forums for storytelling and Indigenous languages, as well as new modes of political expression. In the visual arts, artists remix, mash up and weave together the old with the new, the rural with the urban, traditional and contemporary as a means to rediscover and reinterpret Aboriginal culture within the shifting terrain of the mainstream.
As Aboriginal identities and cultures continue to change, and as artists reinvent older traditions into new forms of expression, their commitment to politics, to storytelling, to Aboriginal languages, to the land and rights remains constant, whether these are stated with drum skins or turntables, natural pigments or spray paint, ceremonial dancing or break dancing.
"The MacKenzie Art Gallery is proud to bring Beat Nation: Art, Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture to Saskatchewan this summer," says Anthony Kiendl, MacKenzie Art Gallery Executive Director and CEO. "This exhibition presents some of the most challenging and outstanding artwork being made in Canada today. It will coincide with the North American Indigenous Games, and the programs of many partner organizations. Collectively, Regina will be at the heart of this July's best cultural and sports activities in the country."
Beat Nation is Co-Curated by Kathleen Ritter, Associate Curator (former), Vancouver art Gallery, and Tania Willard, a Secwepemc artist, designer and curator and features artists: Jackson 2bears, KC Adams, Sonny Assu, Bear Witness, Jordan Bennett, Raymond Boisjoly, Kevin Lee Burton, Nicholas Galanin, Maria Hupfield, Mark Igloliorte, Duane Linklater, madeskimo, Dylan Miner, Kent Monkman, Marianne Nicolson, Skeena Reece and Hoka Skenandore.
Beat Nation: Art, Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture will be on view at the MacKenzie Art Gallery until September 7th, 2014. Admission to the MacKenzie Art Gallery and Beat Nation is free.