Diamond Point is a contemporary Coast Salish artist and a member of the Musqueam Indian Band. Point grew up on Reserve, and currently resides in Ladner with her daughter and husband. As an emerging artist, Point feels her artwork is current and belongs within the present, and she continues to develop and change her techniques and style throughout her experiences. In her work, Point respectfully incorporates traditional Coast Salish design elements to represent the beautiful teachings and history that her ancestors have passed down through generations since time immemorial.
In 2014, Point work was included in Claiming Space: Voices of Urban Indigenous Youth at the UBC Museum of Anthropology. In 2018, Diamond created designs for the UBC Totem Park residences that were named after the traditional Musqueam village sites c̓əsnaʔəm, həm̓ləsəm̓ and q̓ələχən. In 2019, Point’s artwork became the logo for the Humanities, Arts, Science, Technology Alliance and Collaboratory (HASTAC) conference at UBC, on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Musqueam people. Point’s work was also showcased at the Richmond Brighouse Canada Line Station, as part of the 2019 Capture Photography Festival.
Point currently studies at UBC in the NITEP Indigenous Teacher Education Program in the Faculty of Education. Point aims to work as a secondary social studies and art teacher, and feels fortunate to have had the opportunities to express her Indigenous identity and culture within many realms.
Forming two continuous lines on this part of the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) people, wəɬ m̓i ct q̓pəθət tə ɬniməɬ by Diamond Point presents two images on banners that repeat in a sequence hung on the lampposts along UBC’s Main Mall from James Hart’s Reconciliation Pole to the plaza just beyond the Belkin. The banner images echo the contours of the landscape to the north of the promontory and refer to the annual Coast Salish Canoe Journeys. Bringing to mind a group of paddlers announcing themselves before coming ashore, awaiting a welcome according to protocol, the paddles are raised in symmetrical precision. Coast Salish design elements on the paddles indicate who the travellers are and where they have come from and are incorporated here in keeping with the teachings of Point’s ancestors. The alternating heights of the paddle shapes drawn upon turbulent waves serve to activate the design, and through repetition, transform a walk through the installation to a rhythmic journey by water.
Point says of the work: “This visual display is an act of communication between two communities, an abstract representation of cultural significance in Salish tradition, and symbolizes a journey of healing.”
On Thursday, 10 September 2020, Coastal Wolf Pack (Tsatsu Stalqyu) interpreted Point’s banners as a musical score with a performance that began at James Hart’s Reconciliation Pole along Main Mall and ended at the Belkin. At the Belkin, Elder Larry Grant greeted the performers, artists and audience with an official Musqueam welcome.
The artist would like to thank Elder Larry Grant for his generosity and time in discussing the work early in its development, and Jill Campbell for her insight and guidance in the process of conceiving the work.
Diamond Point’s work is part of Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery (September 8-December 6, 2020).
Diamond Point’s banner along Main Mall, UBC. Photo: Rachel Topham Photography.
Coastal Wolf Pack (Tsatsu Stalqyu) performing along Main Mall, UBC. Photo: Rachel Topham Photography.
Coastal Wolf Pack (Tsatsu Stalqyu) performing along Main Mall, UBC. Photo: Rachel Topham Photography.
Coastal Wolf Pack (Tsatsu Stalqyu) performing along Main Mall, UBC. Photo: Rachel Topham Photography.
Coastal Wolf Pack (Tsatsu Stalqyu) performing along Main Mall, UBC. Photo: Rachel Topham Photography.
Diamond Point is a contemporary Coast Salish artist and a member of the Musqueam Indian Band. Point grew up on Reserve, and currently resides in Ladner with her daughter and husband. As an emerging artist, Point feels her artwork is current and belongs within the present, and she continues to develop and change her techniques and style throughout her experiences. In her work, Point respectfully incorporates traditional Coast Salish design elements to represent the beautiful teachings and history that her ancestors have passed down through generations since time immemorial.
In 2014, Point work was included in Claiming Space: Voices of Urban Indigenous Youth at the UBC Museum of Anthropology. In 2018, Diamond created designs for the UBC Totem Park residences that were named after the traditional Musqueam village sites c̓əsnaʔəm, həm̓ləsəm̓ and q̓ələχən. In 2019, Point’s artwork became the logo for the Humanities, Arts, Science, Technology Alliance and Collaboratory (HASTAC) conference at UBC, on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Musqueam people. Point’s work was also showcased at the Richmond Brighouse Canada Line Station, as part of the 2019 Capture Photography Festival.
Point currently studies at UBC in the NITEP Indigenous Teacher Education Program in the Faculty of Education. Point aims to work as a secondary social studies and art teacher, and feels fortunate to have had the opportunities to express her Indigenous identity and culture within many realms.
Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts features newly commissioned scores, performances, videos, sculptures and sound by Indigenous and other artists who respond to the question, How can a score be a call and tool for decolonization? Unfolding in a sequence of five parts, the scores take the form of beadwork, videos, objects, graphic notation, historical belongings and written instructions. During the exhibition, these scores are activated at specific moments by musicians, dancers, performers and members of the public, gradually filling the gallery and surrounding public spaces with sound and action. Curated by Candice Hopkins and Dylan Robinson, Soundings is cumulative, limning an ever-changing community of artworks, shared experience and engagement. Shifting and evolving, it gains new artists and players in each location. For this iteration on Musqueam territory, the Belkin has collaborated with UBC's Musqueam Language Program in partnership with the Musqueam Indian Band Language and Culture Department; School of Music; Chan Centre for Performing Arts; First Nations House of Learning and Museum of Anthropology to support the production of new artworks and performances by local artists.
[more]The following is a list of resources related to Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts. The list of resources compiled here is not an official recommendation, but is rather a list of suggested readings compiled by Public Programs and graduate student researchers at the Belkin Art Gallery. These readings are intended to provide additional context for the exhibition and act as springboards for further research or questions stemming from the exhibition, artists, and works involved.
[more]Join artist Diamond Point (xʷməθkʷəy̓əm / Musqueam) for an outdoor walking tour of her artwork, wəɬ m̓i ct q̓pəθət tə ɬniməɬ, a series of banners along Main Mall that run from James Hart’s Reconciliation Pole to the plaza near the Rose Garden on UBC campus. In keeping with the teachings of Point’s ancestors, the banners refer to protocols of arriving and asking permission to come ashore, while the Coast Salish design elements on the paddles announce who the arrivers are and where they've come from. Learn about the process of creating the design and colour in your own version of the banner.
[more]In response to Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts, a group of Creative Writing graduate students at the University of British Columbia have made a series of activities for visitors to take part in during their visits to the gallery. Thinking through the idea of a score as a call to respond, these activities range from sound walks to reflective worksheets to small group workshops.
[more]through, in between oceans part 2 by Camille Georgeson-Usher is a beaded installation, completed during the isolation of the Spring 2020 pandemic. The artist worked from home in Toronto, a departure from her intention to spend several months on Galiano Island, BC, where she was raised.
[more]Germaine Koh’s drum is made from one of the cedar tree stumps she first brought to site for use as physical distancing stations. She worked with Belkin staff during Summer 2020 to develop COVID-19 safety and visitor interaction protocols that recognized the importance of collective care and teamwork.
[more]Whetung invites gallery visitors to pour different coloured beads from individual small jars into one large vessel, creating a layering of sounds as each bead joins the growing pile. Once the container is filled, the artist turns the amalgam of beads into an entirely new piece – a rectangular beadwork unique to the Belkin’s iteration of the exhibition.
[more]In Part One of NDN Love Songs, Peter Morin offers a score of instructions to musicians presented alongside seven video portraits. Part Two presents videos of recordings of previous iterations of the Soundings exhibition at Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Gund Gallery and Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery. In Part Three, Parmela Attariwala performs the score on the violin at the Belkin.
[more]Around the corner from the Belkin Gallery, Raven Chacon's score American Ledger (No. 1) hangs on the exterior of the Music Building at 6361 Memorial Road, UBC. The score incorporates a traditional musical score with Navajo iconography and is to be performed by "many players with sustaining and percussive instruments, voices, coins, axe and wood, a police whistle and the striking of a match."
[more]Forming two continuous lines on this part of the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) people, wəɬ m̓i ct q̓pəθət tə ɬniməɬ by Diamond Point presents two images repeating in a sequence hung on the lampposts along UBC’s Main Mall from James Hart’s Reconciliation Pole to the plaza just beyond the Belkin.
[more]In lieu of a public concert at the Belkin as has occurred in recent years, musicians from UBC Contemporary Players chose a work by a Canadian composer to perform in an empty gallery, responding to the works of Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts. Videos of these performances are shared here for reference, research, and enjoyment in perpetuity. Soundings asks how a score can be a call and a tool for decolonization. The exhibition's corresponding investigations take at their centre questions of embodiment and subjectivity, of calls and responses. What are the practical matters of embodied decolonization, and how can we practice them? How does embodiment facilitate unlearning, unknowing, and the visioning of Indigenous ontologies?
[more]Surrounded/Surrounding includes a wood-burning fire bowl, etched leather camp stools and a life-sized rendering of the artist’s wood pile in a graphic score. Written on the split logs and the spaces between them are references to the breathing, beating labour that creates what a fire needs, as well as the trees, sun, sky and ground that surrounds and creates all else.
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