Alanis Obomsawin | Sleeping During the Oka Crisis, 1990 | Photo by John Kenney
The major survey exhibition and accompanying monograph offer insights into the rich and complex lifework of Abenaki artist Alanis Obomsawin. The project links history to the present in ways that do not efface the continued violence of colonization, while displaying the resilience and self-determination of Indigenous communities in the face of systematic racism and dispossession. The project will contribute to current public discourse in Europe regarding global Indigenous perspectives and histories of representation as well as the urgent common issues of ecology and collectivity, with special attention given to how Obomsawin’s commitment to activism and art-making has responded to changing sociopolitical realities.