Portrait of Adrian Stimson, 2018

Adrian Stimson is a 2018 winner of the Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts. Directed by Rhayne Vermette

Co-production of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Winnipeg Film Group. Presentation of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Independent Media Arts Alliance.

The Canada Council for the Arts is a federal, arm's-length Crown corporation created by an Act of Parliament in 1957 (Canada Council for the Arts Act) "to foster and promote the study and enjoyment of, and the production of works in, the arts."

For more information, visit: https://ggavma.canadacouncil.ca

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Transcript:

We are not static.

The fact is we are all atoms and we’re all particles being held together by these vessels.

My Beyond Redemption piece.

We’re like an explosion! We just have to spark to, to get that going.

You could see Buffalo Boy’s butt!

Place transcends time.

That goes directly back to my time as a child, wandering these hills and wandering this valley.
And, being a part of this place.

See the owl?

The Blackfoot have this thing about owls … they bring messages of death, but - I gotta
transcend that, and say, ok, well it’s in my practice anyways destruction so no wonder they’re
here!

This is my familial home which is actually the former Old Sun Indian Residential School garden.
And it’s interesting because there’s a little valley and that used to be their dumping ground. So they used to dump all the material culture down there.. and before I became an artist, in
quotation marks, I used to, as a kid, go there and grab a lot of that stuff and bring it home and store it in the garage. And, when I think about my earlier practice it was like taking these objects because they had all this energy and try to rearrange, or evolve that energy.

Or, what I like to say, exorcise that energy!

Oh it’s dusty . . . one of them came off its thing here -

I remember, I was living north of Saskatoon, near Shellbrook and there was a bison herd next door. We had just finished picking all this sweet grass, and we were braiding it. And, the bison herd came right up to the fence, and all I could hear was their breath, and they’re all moving around …

It was just one of those real surreal moments where - suddenly, I was back in time.

…doing the actual - all the work on her dress, on the dresses, and their faces, and …

That knowledge - that Blackfoot knowledge, still exists, in and around us.

[Background discussions]

If it’s all around me, I get the opportunity to actually, reach into the ether, and sort of bring that
energy into myself as an artist.

Oh my grandparents, oh over here - here, maybe I’ll move Aunty Alice out of the way -

I think of that as a continuum, of my Blackfoot history, and my Blackfoot self.