Rebecca Belmore (Lac Seul First Nation (Anishinaabe), b. 1960) is a multidisciplinary visual artist. Belmore is widely recognized for her performance, photographic and sculptural work that makes connections between bodies, land and language with ongoing social and political realities faced by Indigenous communities. Questions of authority, narrative and truth resonate throughout her practice. In 2005 she was the first Indigenous woman to represent Canada in the Venice Biennale. Her work has appeared extensively in exhibitions both nationally and internationally, and her solo exhibitions include the Belkin Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Ontario, and Justina M. Barnick Gallery. Belmore has received numerous honours and awards, including the Hnatyshyn Award (2009), the Governor General’s Award for Visual and Media Arts (2013) and Gershon Iskowitz Prize (2016). She attended the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, and has received honourary doctorates from OCAD University (2005), Emily Carr University of Art and Design (2018), and NSCAD University (2019).
Rebecca Belmore’s powerful installations confront the viewer with images of loss, struggle and silence. The Named and the Unnamed (2002) incorporates a video of Vigil that Belmore performed at the corner of Gore and Cordova Streets on June 23, 2002. The Named and the Unnamed is in polemical commemoration of the women who have gone missing in the downtown eastside of Vancouver. It is a reflection on the larger implications of this local event.
Born in Upsala, Ontario, Rebecca Belmore is an artist currently living in Vancouver, British Columbia. She attended the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto and is internationally recognized for her performance and installation art. Belmore was Canada’s official representative at the 2005 Venice Biennale. Her work has appeared in numerous exhibitions both nationally and internationally.
We thank Rebecca Belmore for lending her edition of The Named and the Unnamed for this exhibition. The edition from the collection of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery is currently presented in Stop(the)Gap: International Indigenous art in motion at the Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art, University of South Australia.
The Named and the Unnamed is presented as part of Faces, an exhibition at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery. Faces is presented in three locations in Vancouver: the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Walter C. Koerner Library and the Satellite Gallery. The exhibition explores the diverse ways faces are represented, looking specifically at how notions of gender, race and class affect our understanding of them—aiming to reveal, in the process, that this uniquely human trait is anything but neutral.
Faces includes drawings, paintings, photographs, sculpture and video from the collections and archives of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, the Canadian Museum of Civilization (Gatineau) and the American Museum of Natural History Library (New York).
Rebecca Belmore (Lac Seul First Nation (Anishinaabe), b. 1960) is a multidisciplinary visual artist. Belmore is widely recognized for her performance, photographic and sculptural work that makes connections between bodies, land and language with ongoing social and political realities faced by Indigenous communities. Questions of authority, narrative and truth resonate throughout her practice. In 2005 she was the first Indigenous woman to represent Canada in the Venice Biennale. Her work has appeared extensively in exhibitions both nationally and internationally, and her solo exhibitions include the Belkin Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Ontario, and Justina M. Barnick Gallery. Belmore has received numerous honours and awards, including the Hnatyshyn Award (2009), the Governor General’s Award for Visual and Media Arts (2013) and Gershon Iskowitz Prize (2016). She attended the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, and has received honourary doctorates from OCAD University (2005), Emily Carr University of Art and Design (2018), and NSCAD University (2019).
Exhibition catalogue from the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery (4 October–1 December 2002). Texts by Scott Watson, Charlotte Townsend-Gault and James Luna.
[more]Rebecca Belmore’s powerful installations confront the viewer with images of loss, struggle and silence. This exhibition features five new works, created during a residency at the Belkin Satellite over the summer.
[more]Vancouver artist Rebecca Belmore was Canada’s official representative at the 2005 Venice Biennale of Visual Art, the world’s oldest and most prestigious venue for the international display of contemporary art. The Kamloops Art Gallery and the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery, which proposed Rebecca Belmore as the Biennale candidate, were the institutions selected in a nationwide competition to represent Canadian visual arts at the event. The 51st edition of the Venice Biennale opened in June 2005.
[more]Exhibition catalogue from the Venice Biennale, 2005. Interview by Scott Watson. Essays by Jessica Bradley and Jolene Rickard.
[more]During the summer months, Rebecca Belmore was invited to use the space of the Belkin Satellite as a studio for producing works that would comprise her solo exhibition at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery from October 4-December 1, 2002.
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