Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun is a Cowichan/

Syilx The ''Syilx'' () people, also known as the Okanagan, Okanogan or Okinagan people, are a First Nations and Native American people whose traditional territory spans the Canada–US boundary in Washington state and British Columbia in the Okanagan C ...

First Nations First Nations or first peoples may refer to: * Indigenous peoples, for ethnic groups who are the earliest known inhabitants of an area. Indigenous groups *First Nations is commonly used to describe some Indigenous groups including: **First Natio ...

contemporary artist from Canada. His paintings employ elements of Northwest Coast formline design and

Surrealism Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...

to explore issues as environmentalism, land ownership, and Canada's treatment of First Nations peoples.

Early life

Born in

Kamloops Kamloops ( ) is a city in south-central British Columbia, Canada, at the confluence of the South flowing North Thompson River and the West flowing Thompson River, east of Kamloops Lake. It is located in the Thompson-Nicola Regional District, w ...

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

in 1957, Yuxweluptun grew up in

Richmond, British Columbia Richmond is a coastal city in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia, Canada. It occupies almost the entirety of Lulu Island (excluding Queensborough), between the two estuarine distributaries of the Fraser River. Encompassing the ad ...

. His father, Ben Paul, belongs to the

Cowichan Tribes Cowichan Tribes ( hur, Quw’utsun) is the band government of the Cowichan, a group of Coast Salish peoples who live in the Cowichan Valley region on Vancouver Island. With over 3,800 registered members, it is the single largest First Nations ...

, a

Coast Salish The Coast Salish is a group of ethnically and linguistically related Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, living in the Canadian province of British Columbia and the U.S. states of Washington and Oregon. They speak one of the Coas ...

First Nation, and his mother, Connie Paul, is

, part of the

Okanagan Nation Alliance The Okanagan Nation Alliance is a First Nations Tribal Council in the Canadian province of British Columbia, spanning the Nicola, Okanagan and Similkameen Districts of the Canadian province of British Columbia and also the Colville Indian Reserv ...

. Yuxweluptun's upbringing provided an acute awareness of the issues facing Aboriginal peoples. Growing up in a politically active family, his father, an astute politician, was an active member of the North American Indian Brotherhood, and a founder and former head of the

Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs The Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) is a First Nations political organization founded in 1969 in response to Jean Chrétien's White Paper proposal to assimilate Status Indians and disband the Department of Indian Affairs. Sin ...

. Yuxweluptun's mother was active in both organizations and led the Indian Homemakers Association of British Columbia. His parents attended many of these meetings with Yuxweluptun in tow. Initially encouraged to pursue a career in politics, instead it is Yuxweluptun's paintings, drawings, and assemblages that give voice to concerns regarding land claims, damaging assimilationist policies, and environmental degradation. From his perspective, "An artist can't do anything if he doesn't watch, observe, and participate in what's going on." "My work is to record." Yuxweluptun also maintained a close relationship with Coast Salish cultural traditions. At fourteen he was given the right to dance with the X̱wáýx̱way mask and at seventeen was initiated as a Black Face dancer. His name means "man of many masks" and was given to him in his adolescence by the Sxwaixwe Society. Yuxweluptun attended the Emily Carr College of Art and Design (now University) in the late 1970s and early 1980s and graduated in 1983 with an honours degree in painting.

Symbolism and technique

Yuxweluptun works primarily in painting but has also created multimedia and sculptural works. Many of his pieces show elements of Surrealism as a process of "truth-telling and healing," including similarities to the painted melting objects of Spanish artist,

Salvador Dalí Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (; ; ; 11 May 190423 January 1989) was a Spanish Surrealism, surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarr ...

. His work incorporates traditional elements from Northwest First Nations art, as well as evocations of the Canadian landscape painting tradition derived from the

Group of Seven The Group of Seven (G7) is an intergovernmental political forum consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States; additionally, the European Union (EU) is a "non-enumerated member". It is official ...

. Environmental issues are often central themes in Yuxweluptun's work. His paintings have overtly political statements and titles, and often highlight land use and land ownership issues. Generally, Yuxweluptun's paintings are described as "provocative;" for example, his multimedia piece ''Residential School Dirty Laundry'' illustrates a cross made out of children's underwear with red paint to represent blood, and references the treatment of First Nations children in the

Canadian Indian residential school system In Canada, the Indian residential school system was a network of boarding schools for Indigenous peoples. The network was funded by the Canadian government's Department of Indian Affairs and administered by Christian churches. The school sy ...

. Yuxweluptun is among the most overtly critical artists practicing in Canada today; he doesn't shy away from depicting the devastating realities that face many Native people and does so through a unique hybridization of Northwest Coast aesthetics—ovoids and stylized formlines—with the dream-like aesthetics of

. Yuxweluptun's wry appropriation of Surrealism is a reminder of the formative influence of Aboriginal artifacts, including Northwest coast masks, on this movement. He developed this signature style while a student at Emily Carr University. This “deliberate act of reciprocal appropriation” broke with many conventions of Aboriginal art and was initially contentious among both Native and non-Native art communities. Although the ovoid is used in Coast Salish art, formlines which are identifiably Haida and Kwakwaka'wakw also figure prominently in the artist's paintings and drawings. This perceived lack of authenticity with regards to his artistic and cultural heritage is of little concern to Yuxweluptun. In a recent telephone conversation he stated that painting in a more generic Northwest Coast style enables him to more accurately represent what he terms “the imaginary Indian” or “the symbolic Native.” The figures in his paintings then are not necessarily representations of real people—or specific Northwest coast beings or ceremonies—but instead comment on the way in which Native identity has been constructed from outside perspectives. Perhaps the most important achievement of Yuxweluptun's paintings within the context of Canadian landscape painting is his introduction of the politicized landscape. The harsh “toxicological” realities shown in Yuxweluptun's paintings—forests ravaged by clear cuts, water filled with toxic pollution, the figures of bureaucracy (Native and non-Native alike), the abject poverty and abuse on Vancouver's downtown east side—are allegorical and rendered like stunning nightmares with smouldering technicolour palettes that are hard to overlook. As curator Scott Watson observes, his works invert the subservient role of Native arts and crafts within the development of Canadian Modernism.

Artwork

''Inherent Rights, Vision Rights''

''Inherent Rights, Vision Rights'' was one of the first

Virtual Reality Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), educ ...

(VR) artworks ever made in Canada and was produced between 1991 and 1993 at the

Banff Centre Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, formerly known as The Banff Centre (and previously The Banff Centre for Continuing Education), located in Banff, Alberta, was established in 1933 as the Banff School of Drama. It was granted full autonomy as ...

for the Arts for the Art and Virtual Environments Project. The work's components included Macintosh and PC computers, a sampler, spatialized sound, custom-made controls and stereoscopic display. It was also the first VR piece to be exhibited by the

National Gallery of Canada The National Gallery of Canada (french: Musée des beaux-arts du Canada), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's national art museum. The museum's building takes up , with of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the l ...

. It was exhibited at the National Gallery of Canada in 1992 in the exhibition ''Land, Spirit, Power: First Nations at the National Gallery of Canada / Terre, esprit, pouvoir. Les Premières Nations au Musée des beaux-arts du Canada'' (Fall, 1992). ''Inherent Rights, Vision Rights'' pioneered new techniques for the exhibition of VR pieces by blending computer-generated 3D sound with figures derived from Yuxweluptun's paintings. The viewer does not wear a helmet to experience the work. Instead, the viewer enters a kiosk similar to an old-fashioned

stereoscope A stereoscope is a device for viewing a stereoscopic pair of separate images, depicting left-eye and right-eye views of the same scene, as a single three-dimensional image. A typical stereoscope provides each eye with a lens that makes the ima ...

, and experiences spatialized sound and computer graphics. The kiosk represents a

Longhouse A longhouse or long house is a type of long, proportionately narrow, single-room building for communal dwelling. It has been built in various parts of the world including Asia, Europe, and North America. Many were built from timber and often rep ...

, described in a 1993 edition of ''Canadian Art'' as a "simulated cartoon longhouse inhabited by a variety of Yuxweluptun's typical animal spirits and ghosts".

''Haida Hot Dog''

One of Yuxweluptun's earlier pieces, the 1984 work ''Haida Hot Dog'', comments in pop-art style on the commodification of First Nations, and particularly

Haida Haida may refer to: Places * Haida, an old name for Nový Bor * Haida Gwaii, meaning "Islands of the People", formerly called the Queen Charlotte Islands * Haida Islands, a different archipelago near Bella Bella, British Columbia Ships * , a 1 ...

, artwork.

''Scorched Earth, Clear-cut Logging on Native Sovereign Land''

This piece, created in 1991, was exhibited at the

Vancouver Art Gallery The Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) is an art museum in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The museum occupies a adjacent to Robson Square in downtown Vancouver, making it the largest art museum in Western Canada by building size. Designed by Franc ...

in the exhibition ''Lost Illusions: Recent Landscape Art'', curated by Denise Oleksijczuk, in 1991. It was among the first works acquired for the National Gallery of Canada's collection from the exhibition ''Land, Spirit, Power: First Nations at the National Gallery of Canada.'' This overtly political painting combines a broad range of influences drawn from the contemporary history of Indigenous peoples, Coast Salish cosmology, Northwest Coast formal design elements, and Western landscape traditions. Yuxweluptun wrote in 1992, "My work is very different from traditional art work. How do you paint a land claim? You can't carve a totem pole that has a beer bottle on it ... I paint this for what it is – a very toxic land base. This is what my ancestral motherland is becoming. Painting is a form of political activism, a way to exercise my inherent right, my right to authority, my freedom ... I can speak out in my paintings even without the recognition of self-government."

Awards and honours

* 1998 Yuxweluptun was the recipient of the Vancouver Institute for the Visual Arts (VIVA) award. * 2013 Yuxweluptun received a fellowship at the Eitelijorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis. * 2019 Yuxweluptun received an Honorary doctorate from

Emily Carr University Emily Carr University of Art + Design (abbreviated as ECU) is a public art university located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The university's campus is located within the Great Northern Way Campus in Strathcona. The university is a co-e ...

Exhibitions

Yuxweluptun's work has been included in numerous international group and solo exhibitions, such as ''INDIGENA: Contemporary Native Perspectives'' in 1992 and 1993. ''INDIGENA'' was a major touring exhibition of Indigenous art curated by Gerald MacMaster and Lee-Ann Martin. Yuxweluptun was the only artist to be included in both ''INDIGENA'' and ''Land, Spirit, Power: First Nations at the National Gallery of Canada''. These two exhibitions are now recognized as pivotal moments in the national recognition of Aboriginal art and which aided in introducing a new generation of Aboriginal artists to the fore. In 1993, the

Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery is a contemporary art gallery in Vancouver, British Columbia, on the campus of the University of British Columbia. The gallery is housed in an award-winning building designed by architect Peter Cardew and o ...

in Vancouver opened their new space with Yuxweluptun's work. This exhibition, ''Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun: Born to Live and Die on Your Colonialist Reservations'', remains the artist's first and only career survey to date and served to underscore the importance of his work within the Canadian landscape painting tradition for its role in actively challenging many of the genre's conventions. Yuxweluptun's work appeared in ''75 Years of Collecting'', the

's 75th anniversary commemorative exhibition. The exhibition took place throughout 2006 with a four-part series highlighting the history and diversity of the gallery's permanent collection of nearly 9,000 works. Western Front presented ''Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun'' from March 7 to April 4, 2009. Curated by

Candice Hopkins Candice Hopkins (born 1977) is a Carcross/Tagish First Nation independent curator, writer, and researcher who predominantly explores areas of indigenous history, and art. Early life and education Candice Hopkins was born 1977 in Whitehorse, Yuk ...

and Mark Soo, the exhibition consisted of a single painting, ''Guardian Spirits on the Land: Ceremony of Sovereignty'' (2000) alongside a selection of pulp science fiction novels. The exhibition was held in conjunction with a series of talks by writers that explore Yuxweluptun's work in relation to the genre of science fiction. ''Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun: Neo-Native Drawings and Other Works'' appeared from March 19 to May 16, 2010 at the

Contemporary Art Gallery A contemporary art gallery is normally a commercial art gallery operated by an art dealer which specializes in displaying for sale contemporary art, usually new works of art by living artists. This approach has been called the "Castelli Method" ...

in Vancouver. This exhibit featured three decades of drawings extending from 1980 to 2009 including works such as tree studies, ovoid portraits, figurative works, etchings, and sketchbooks. Many of the drawings were untitled. ''Shore, Forest and Beyond: Art From the Audain Collection,'' organized by the

and curated by Ian Thom and Grant Arnold, presented from October 29, 2011 to January 29, 2012. ''Shore, Forest and Beyond'' was an exhibition of 100 works gathered from the collection assembled by

Michael Audain Michael James Audain, (born July 31, 1937) is a Canadian home builder, philanthropist and art collector. He is the Chairman and major shareholder of the privately held Polygon Homes Ltd., one of the largest multi-family builders in British Colu ...

. Yuxweluptun's work was exhibited in ''Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art,'' the

’s special exhibition. It ran from May 17 to September 2, 2013 and was deemed the largest-ever global survey of contemporary Indigenous art in 2013. ''Unceded Territories,'' a solo exhibition, was co-curated by Karen Duffek, (MOA Curator, Contemporary Visual Arts & Pacific Northwest) and

Tania Willard Tania Willard (born 1977) is an Indigenous Canadian multidisciplinary artist, graphic designer, and curator, known for mixing traditional Indigenous arts practices with contemporary ideas. Willard is from the Secwepemc nation, of the British Co ...

(artist and independent curator, Secwepemc Nation) at the

Museum of Anthropology This is a list of museums with major collections in ethnography and anthropology. It is sorted by descending number of objects listed. # Canadian Museum of History, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada #: 3.75 million artifacts # Musée du quai Branly, P ...

(MOA),

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public university, public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks a ...

, in 2016. Other exhibitions include globally and in Canada, ''Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun: Time Immemorial (You're Just Mad Because We Got Here First)'', Galerie Canada Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom, 2017; ''Colour Zone'', Plug In ICA, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 2009; ''An Indian Act: Shooting the Indian Act,'' Locus+, Newcastle, UK, 1997; ''Inherent Rights, Vision Rights: Virtual Reality Paintings and Drawings,'' Canadian Embassy, Paris, 1993; ''True North: The Landscape Tradition in Contemporary Canadian Art'',

Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts The Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts (KMFA; ) is located in Gushan District, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. It was founded by the Kaohsiung City Government and has been administrated by the Kaohsiung Bureau of Cultural Affairs since 2003. It occupies about a ...

, Taipei, Taiwan; ''New Territories: 350/500 Years After,'' Montreal, Quebec (touring); ''In the Shadow of the Sun'',

Canadian Museum of Civilization The Canadian Museum of History (french: Musée canadien de l’histoire) is a national museum on anthropology, Canadian history, cultural studies, and ethnology in Gatineau, Quebec, Canada. The purpose of the museum is to promote the heritage of C ...

Hull, Quebec Hull is the central business district and oldest neighbourhood of the city of Gatineau, Quebec, Canada. It is located on the west bank of the Gatineau River and the north shore of the Ottawa River, directly opposite Ottawa. As part of the Canadia ...

, 1988; and ''The Warehouse Show'', Vancouver, British Columbia, 1983.