Rebecca Belmore

(b.1960, Upsala, Ontario, lives in Winnipeg, Canada)

Rebecca Belmore’s work addresses the contemporary struggles of Indigenous peoples

and evokes the violence that colonialism has enacted upon the body and the land. In Wild(2001/2014), a four-poster master bed is refitted with long black hair and beaver pelts, playing on the exoticisation of Indigenous cultures. Wild is both a comment on a contested history and an indulgence of a fantasy of social and political transgression, fulfilling a desire to both literally and metaphorically occupy the ‘master’s bed’. Fringe (2008) is a photograph of a reclining nude woman with a deep scar running across her back. From a distance the slash appears to be bleeding, with lines of blood streaming down her back. Up close, we see the wound sutured with beadwork, referencing the Anishinaabe tradition and suggestive of a process of healing.

Rebecca Belmore attended the Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto and is internationally recognised for her performances and installations. Since 1987, her multi-disciplinary work has addressed history, place and identity. Belmore was Canada’s official representative at the 51st Venice Biennale.  Solo exhibitions include: Rising to the Occasion, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2008; The Named and the Unnamed, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver, 2002; and 33 Pieces, Blackwood Gallery, Mississauga, 2001. She has been included in numerous group exhibitions: Houseguests, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 2001; Longing and Belonging: From the Faraway Nearby, SITE Santa Fe, 1995; and Land, Spirit, Power, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1992. In 2013 Belmore was awarded a Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts.

With thanks to George Pirie Antiques, 22 Howe Street. 

Wild is installed at City Art Centre thanks to George Pirie Antiques