Image Credit: Harmeet Rehal
Image Credit: Harmeet Rehal
nadyes / you come back, 2022
Bronze, shed moose and elk antlers, acrylic paint
WORK STATEMENT
Within nadyes / you come back, Logan MacDonald uses sculptural installation to lyrically fixate on the learning and communication that exists outside colonial norms of communication, and to consider how erasure that is imposed by colonial mechanism can be subverted. MacDonald incorporates bronze strategically as a symbolic signifier to reference the perpetuated colonial narratives and systems imposed on our landscapes and bodies – and the hierarchical ways in which we are expected to teach and learn. He employs these bronze pieces in a dismantled/fragmented state, to subvert their power – absorbing the structures as aides that help form tableaux that support new meanings, histories, perspectives, movements, conversations, teachings. nadyes / you come back is presented as a series of small arranged sculptural installations and imagery traced on the wall. Together they form a large coded assemblage, with each piece, in some way, gesturing to the embodiment of knowledge: how our bodies can learn and teach through movements, vibrations, bodily cues, and how these signals have the capacity to transmit and extend between generations. nadyes / you come back is an attempt to lyrically highlight how we are capable of communicating beyond colonial language, to illustrate how Indigenous, queer, and crip folks have and continue to strategize to communicate our knowledge, needs, desires. How we have lived within the colonial systems, but are able to communicate beyond these limits, to survive in a system designed to ensure our erasure. The shed antler incorporated into nadyes / you come back is an example of MacDonald’s conceptual approach, by incorporating this biological material to reference a part of an animal’s body that is speculated to help them sonically hear both mates and prey.
Text by Amanda Cashia.
Logan MacDonald is an artist, curator, writer, educator and activist who focuses on identity and belonging through queer, disability, and decolonial perspectives. He is of mixed-European, and Mi’kma... w ancestry, who identifies with both his Indigenous and settler roots. Born in Summerside, Prince Edward Island, his Mi’kmaw ancestry is connected to Elmastukwek, Ktaqamkuk. His artwork has exhibited across North America, notably with exhibitions at L.A.C.E. (Los Angeles), John Connelly Presents (New York), Ace Art Inc. (Winnipeg), The Rooms (St. John’s), and BACA (Montréal), in addition to being published by Goose Lane, Canadian Art, C Magazine, UN Projects, and more. In 2019, MacDonald was longlisted for the Sobey Art Award and was honoured with a six-month residency at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. He holds a BFA in Interdisciplinary Studies from Concordia University, and a MFA in Studio Arts from York University. In 2019 he was the lead Accessibility Consultant for the Toronto Waterfront Sidewalk Labs project. In 2021, he was a keynote speaker for the Canadian Public Arts Funders (CPAF), and in 2022 he was a respondent for the Ontario Arts Councils 2022-2027 Strategic Plan. He served as Vice-Chair of the Indigenous Curatorial Collective (ICCA) from 2019-2022. Currently, MacDonald is a Canada Research Chair and Assistant Professor in Studio Arts at University of Waterloo.