Facts about sonny assu
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Sonny Assu: Études for the Settler
Exhibition
October 23 – November 17, 2018
Jacob Lawrence Gallery
Reception: Wednesday, October 24, 5–7pm
This exhibition brings together a new body of work by Sonny Assu, Territorial Acknowledgements, alongside his prior series that problematize colonial conceptions of the landscape: The Paradise Syndrome (2017), 1UP (2016), and Interventions On The Imaginary (2014). Through these works, Assu offers corrective visions of colonized landscapes.
A series on found, thrift-shop landscape paintings, Territorial Acknowledgements layers Indigenous land-based mark-making in red ochre (referencing petroglyphs) onto images of the North American landscape in the style of the Group of Seven or the Hudson River School. Alluding to the falsities of Manifest Destiny, Assu reinserts an Indigenous presence into the depictions of landscapes from which they have been violently removed. As Assu asserts,
Whether it is a Group of Seven member or a humble Sunday-painter, I see my ancestors being white-washed out of these landscapes, presenting only the
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Biography
Sonny Assu (b. 1975)
Interdisciplinary Artist
Sonny Assu (Ligwiłda’xw of the Kwakwaka’wakw Nations) was raised in North Delta, BC, over 250 km from his ancestral home on Vancouver Island. Having been raised as your everyday average suburbanite, it wasn’t until he was eight years old that he clued into his Kwakwaka’wakw heritage. In his mid-20s, while attending Emily Carr, that discovery would be the conceptual focal point that helped launch his unique art practice.
Assu explores multiple mediums and materials to negotiate Western and Kwakwaka’wakw principles of art-making. Often autobiographical, his work can be humorous, laden with pop culture, comic book and sci-fi references. But it can also be solemn, political, educational and activist in tone. His diverse practice deals with the realities of being Indigenous in the colonial state of Canada, which mirrors the plight of Indigenous and colonized peoples around the world.
Sonny received his BFA from the Emily Carr University in 2002 and was honoured with the University’s distinguished alumnus award, the Emily Aw
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Sonny Assu
Ligwilda'xw Kwakwaka'wakw contemporary artist
Sonny Assu (born 1975 in Richmond, British Columbia)[1] is a Canadiancontemporary artist. Assu's paintings, sculptures, prints, installations, and interventions are all infused with his wry humour which is a tool to open the conversation around his themes of predilections: consumerism, colonization and imperialism.[2]
Career
Assu was given a suburban upbringing by his grandparents in North Delta, British Columbia, and didn't learn of his own Kwakwaka'wakw heritage until he was eight years old. He studied painting at Kwantlen College and then at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design, where he combined his interests in pop art with traditional drum-making and cedar bark weaving.[3]
Assu was long-listed for the Sobey Art Award in 2012, 2013, and 2015.[4] In 2017 he was the recipient of a REVEAL Indigenous Art Award / Prix en art autochtone from the Hnatyshyn Foundation.[5]
Assu is an author in the graphic novel anthology "This Place: 150 Years Retold."&#
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