[Brian Jungen] Eu não cresci na costa.
Eu realmente gosto de estar perto do oceano. Mas eu gosto de ir visitá-lo e depois ir embora novamente.
Quando eu morava no litoral, eu fui muito influenciado pela arte das Primeiras Nações
na costa, e eu estava interessado em como algo
muito específico como os motifs da costa e imagens costeiras
passar a ser algo que era realmente associado a toda a província
Eu tinha ouvido falar da última orca assassina, eu estava saindo do Aquário de Vancouver, então eu queria filmá-la, então
e foi quando eu meio que tropecei sobre o que costumava ser uma grande indústria,
a indústria baleeira no Costa oeste.
A imagem da baleia foi bastante difundida, difundida em todas as culturas nativas marítimas.
Quando fiz a primeira, todas desse tipo vieram junto
trabalhando com aquelas cadeiras deixei muitas pistas que as pessoas poderiam dizer o que eram.
Você pode comprar essas cadeiras em qualquer lugar,
e são baratas.
O tipo de mudança que acontece, a faísca, certo,
isso faz com que as pessoas se interessem.
♪ ♪
Se você perguntar a qualquer índio nativo "De onde você é?"
eles realmente não diriam a cidade em que por acaso moravam.
Eles diriam de onde suas relações de sangue são.
Eu sou Dane-zaa, então isso é uma parte muito específica do país.
Mas me mudei para Vancouver quando eu tinha 18 anos para ir para uma escola de arte,
e essa foi a primeira vez que morei em uma cidade.
Eu amo as oportunidades e a cultura
ao seu redor quando você está em uma cidade, mas eu prefiro viver aqui fora.
É bom ver todo essa sálvia florindo, né?
Minha infância foi passada em uma fazenda de gado muito grande,
então, quando eu era criança,
Eu passei muito tempo fora na floresta com os cachorros.
Eles eram como os meus guardiões.
Ed é um vira-lata do norte de Alberta.
Ele é o chefe deste lugar de algumas maneiras.
Por exemplo, todos ouvimos ao Ed.
Então, sim, isso é do outro lado da estrada pra lá, esses pastos fazem parte da propriedade
e lá em cima na encosta e lá em cima também.
My ancestors were promised they could
either live on reserve, or they would be given land,
but none of it was honored.
♪ ♪
When I started working with shoes in the nineties,
I went into Niketown.
They had sneakers of theirs in glass vitrines,
and I thought that was so strange.
I started to make connections between the commodification of those shoes and
the same thing that's happened to Native art.
And then there was just kind of a strange coincidence that the color
schemes and designs look very similar to Northwest Coast masks
There was this kind of illicit thrill I got by buying these Air Jordans and, like,
immediately starting to cut them up and stuff.
So, yeah, and that was my first kind of foray
into making objects.
[chains rattling]
- Tch, tch.
I'm a pretty quiet person.
I was kind of raised around cowboy culture, so there's a lot of aggression
but it's not really how I approach the world.
- That's right. Attaboy.
So I didn't have much access to culture growing up in the north, so I had,
like one television station AM radio, kind of thing.
My folks died when I was 7, so I just kind
kind of like buried myself in these--my imagination.
I used to make artwork because I thought
I could hide behind it,
and that turned out not to be the case.
My artwork became so tied up with my identity, especially as Native Canadian,
that it was almost impossible to talk about my artwork without my identity.
An uncle of mine showed me how to make drums years ago, and I'm not a very good
musician, but whenever I'm home, like, my cousins will kind of thrust a drum at me
to, like, participate, and it's great. I love it,
but I wanted to make some of my own.
I've always also really liked modern furniture.
So I kind of used those chairs to make these drums,
give them a life other than a utilitarian furniture, right?
Kind of give them a voice.
[strumming guitar]
Yeah, I--I like vehicles.
I have a nice Impala now. It's my summer car really.
I cruise around in that.
♪ ♪
When I was an adolescent and into my 20s,
I had to figure out who I was and kind of come out of the closet,
but that's really not an issue anymore. I think gay culture's kind of mainstream...
and I never really fit into that stereotype anyways.
My family are hunters. it's very common in Canada,
but a lot of my family have freezers to keep moose meat in,
and a lot of the times, they're outside.
When I was visiting family, and I started making these temporary sculptures and
sticking them on top of the freezers because they were like the perfect
pedestal,
and I liked kind of seeing that, like some people would just--they thought like
"Who put all this crap on here?" and other people, they would look at it and say,
"Oh, that's an artwork, right?" So I decided to take that into the studio.
I like using things people can recognize that they see around them every day.
[synth music]
[Sewing machine running]
This new series I just started, it's gonna be shown in Vancouver in January.
I wanted to revisit the material it's been about 10 years,
and I wanted to do it in a new way.
When I first made them, I was just kind of slowly taking them apart piece by piece,
and now I just am much more fluid with it.
- Oh, there are like kind of horns.
[Saw whirring]
I work very intuitively. We just tighten everything up and then
start cutting see what happens.
I--I don't have an idea of what it's gonna look
like in my head, so it will be finished when it feels finished.
You know, I always say to myself, "I'm not gonna work like this anymore,
and things are gonna be done weeks ahead of the opening,"
but I guess a part of me still likes the kind
of intensity of working down to the wire.
- This will be attached?
Have you figured out how that's gonna work?
- No.
- No, no.
- So...
Yeah.
- Well, and hope for the best.
[laughs]
[synth sounds]
I wanted to make these ones more abstract.
I think when I made the first ones I was
interested in referencing them to what people thought native art is.
Now I've kind of moved away from that.
And some of these just feel like 20th century modern sculpture.
[strumming guitar]
I'm involved in a contemporary art community that is very exclusive
♪ ♪
I don't know. There's all different sorts of art worlds.
There's a whole Native American art world.
♪ ♪
I kind of have a bit of a hand in that.
♪ ♪
If I hadn't gone to art school, if my parents hadn't died,
I probably would have wound up working on the family farm
and making art in secret.
♪ ♪
[soft electronic music]