JANE ASH POITRAS, C.M., R.C.A. (1951-) CREE, Power Shaman, 1989

After her years of studies at both the University of Alberta and Columbia University, Jane Ash Poitras was made familiar with Abstract Art and its various iterations of artistic experimentation. The bold and unexpected text that we see here in Power Shaman, “SHAMANIZE THE 90’s,” reveals also a sensitivity to the neo-Dada movements and early Pop Art. The text, a veritable call to arms, is an act of cultural reclamation that is as profound as it is punchy. The focal point of the painting is a seated shaman, loosely assembled from gestural, highly expressive brushwork, and depicted with two great, hollowed eyes that suggest that he is perhaps wearing a mask. Vivid chromatic punctuations and collaged twigs emanate from the central figure with an electric vitality.

Literature: See Pamela McCallum, Cultural Memories and Imagined Futures: The Art of Jane Ash Poitras, (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2011). For contemporaneous paintings by the artist see Gerald McMaster and Lee-Ann Martin, Indigena: Contemporary Native Perspectives (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre / Hull: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1992), pp. 166-169; and Allan J. Ryan, The Trickster Shift: Humour and Irony in Contemporary Native Art (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1999), pp. 82-83, 93, 94, 157, 208-209.

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JANE ASH POITRAS, C.M., R.C.A. (1951-) CREE

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