Non-Compliance.ca

Three Curators -- Twelve Artist. Twelve Videos.

This project seeks to put a context and history to Aboriginal media art practice and provide a forum dedicated to the representation of Aboriginal artists working in the media arts. We have invited three nationally recognized curators to create programs of seminal works by Aboriginal artists, thus creating an online exhibition of Aboriginal media works representing major artists and movements within media arts discourse. The selected curators have produced critical essays and online curator¹s talks on the impacts and history of media art within an Aboriginal context.

Native artists work from a history grounded in the colonial experience. Yet an aesthetic has developed in spite of cultural oppression and repression that is distinct, vibrant and multi, as well as cross disciplinary. In many ways, the work of Aboriginal media artists can be seen as the outgrowth of a distinctly Aboriginal visual and literary culture. It represents an aesthetic of nexus based on an oral storytelling tradition and the increased participation of Aboriginal artists in visual arts culture.

As more media art finds its way into gallery and presentation spaces, we must examine the place of an Aboriginal cultural specificity. What is important here, is that this is not a dialogue about the formation of some pan-Indian identity politic, but that experimentation in media art by Aboriginal artists challenges control by others of our image and our perception. This is our point of departure.