Janvier exhibit
is on at the National Gallery of Canada until April 17
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A
retrospective of Alex Janvier's career is on display at the
National Gallery of Canada until April 17.
(photo
courtesy Hallie Cotnam/CBC)
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Residential school is where Alex Janvier was stripped of his
culture and language. It's also where he discovered art and a career
path that eventually led him to a major exhibition of his life's
work at the National Gallery of Canada.
The acclaimed artist of Dene and Saulteaux descent was taken
from his family at the La Goff Reserve in Alberta when he was eight
years old and sent to the Blue Quills Indian Residential School.
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Alex
Janvier began drawing and creating art as a boy to cope with
his residential school experience.
(photo courtesy CBC)
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"We were just thrown in the back of the truck, and we were
taken somewhere. And it was in the fall time. It was getting awfully
cold in the back of the truck," Janvier recalled to Ottawa
Morning host Hallie Cotnam.
Four hours later, he and the other children arrived at the school,
and his life would never be the same.
'I was in fear'
"I was in fear. I became scared of everything, because
I didn't understand what was happening to me. They stripped you
completely, threw you in a public shower, and they cut your hair
bald," he said.
"Even some of us had real braids from childhood. That was
stripped right off, cut right off. There was a lot of gnashing of
teeth and crying."
While he was disconnected from the Dene language he grew up
speaking, he found a new way to express himself while at residential
school by creating art.
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Shaughnessey
Brown looks at Alex Janvier's artwork, which is renowned for
its colourful and unique compositions.
(photo courtesy Hallie Cotnam/CBC)
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"I found a certain time of the week, you could escape from
the whole outlay of controls. And for about three hours, you're
in your own world, and that's when I began to discover my ability
to work on paper and beautiful colours all kinds of colours,"
he said.
Janvier used pencils and water colours to bring life to his
residential school surroundings, which he describes as "grey."
"It was a form of escapism from the regular routine
the dry routine," he said.
International acclaim
He continued to develop a colourful style of unique compositions,
and quickly turned heads in the art world as a young man. He became
one of the first Indigenous students to obtain a degree from an
art college when he graduated from the Southern Alberta Institute
of Technology and Art in 1960.
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National
Gallery of Canada visitors have left notes for Janvier on
how his work has impacted them.
(photo courtesy Hallie Cotnam/CBC)
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In 1973, he helped found the collective that came to be known
as the Indian Group of Seven, which included other internationally
renowned Indigenous artists like Daphne Odjig, Norval Morrisseau,
and Jackson Beardy.
The National Gallery of Canada is currently showing a major
career retrospective of Janvier's work. He was at the gallery on
the weekend for a live demonstration of his creative process.
He's appreciated the feedback he's been getting about his work
at the gallery, which includes notes left behind by visitors.
"Some of it is really touching, because the residential
school left me pretty raw in feeling. I was just a kid robbed of
everything my culture, my language, my connection to the
elders who were really my significant teachers when I was younger,"
he said.
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Alex
Janvier's 1988 painting Lubicon.
(photo courtesy National Gallery of Canada)
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