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Audio Guide Transcript: Wutanminu – Our Community

Intro
My name is Nelson White and I’m an indigenous painter from Flat Bay, Newfoundland, which is on the West Coast of this province. The title of this exhibition is Wutanminu, which means “My Community.” Kinship means familiarity and kinship doesn’t necessarily mean blood relatives. I have a community of artists that are my kin. I have a community of sports fans that are my kin. My family are my kin. Kin is that community of souls that come into your life that become important to you, that sort of you feel for, and that’s what kin is. Kin doesn’t necessarily have to be blood. Kin has to be a connection. Once you have that connection, you have kin. What I try to do is, I try to create work that’s bright and inviting and that the viewer can see some commonality in themselves, as well as teaching a little bit about indigenous culture and people figuring out that, okay, we’re all not that different.

It’s not like that in the world as it exists today. There’s these encampments; you must be this or you must be that. There’s no in-between. And I wanted to show the in-between. I wanted to show that we all care about our family. We all take part in activities. We know the same people, even though culturally there are different markers and things like that. So that was the thought in going into creating a new show, creating the work: that first of all, you can sort of see indigenous people for who they are, as well as being invited to be part of the family.

Training Day
This painting’s called Training Day. Sometimes I steal movie titles. I tend to use these floral backgrounds. One of the reasons I do that is because I want the paintings to be about the subject, not about the place. And I think sometimes if there was buildings and trees and roads, that becomes a distraction. So I want it to be about the subject, but I include the florals because I don’t want a flat color. I want something organic. And the florals are organic and there’s a kindness to ’em. There’s a gentleness to the florals that helps draw the viewer into the painting a bit more. This is more of a Labrador cultural thing. When you train sled dogs, you have to teach ’em to pull. So this is a case where they’re pulling an all-terrain vehicle because the altering vehicle can be put in neutral and has weight. So the dogs are learning to pull a weight without having to strain too much on something too heavy. So they’re actually pulling at the learning to be a sled dog, and is also practiced in the summer to keep the dogs in sync. So this is what this painting is about. This painting is about them learning them, learning their craft.

Senator
This painting is called the Senator. This is my sister Senator Julie White. She’s the first indigenous senator from Newfoundland. My sister is a force for human rights and for women’s rights as well as indigenous rights. This painting also came about because I’d painted all of my family members except my sister. So every time an new painting appeared on my Instagram or something like that, I’d get a note from my sister saying, oh, nice, but when are you painting me? I did an artist talk at STX when my other show was there. They had a live video feed for the artist talk Facebook Live or whatever it was. I was answering questions and they were taking questions from online, and the first question was, have you painted everybody in your family? And if not, why? It was my sister asking me questions. She’s brilliant. And also one of the silliest people you’ll ever meet. So when this show appeared, I finally had to do it.

Contemplation
This painting is called Contemplation. This is my friend Anne, who is actually an indigenous designer and a writer for CBC out of Fredericton, New Brunswick. I wanted her closer. This painting actually evolved. She’s a biker. She rides motorcycles, but I didn’t want to turn her into a “biker chick”. I wanted her, again, more gentle. So, we came to her on a trike, came to her on an ATV vehicle, and I wanted her up close because she’s a kind, sweet soul. This is more indicative of a lot of my portraiture work, where they’re closer and they’re tighter, as opposed to more figures in the painting. I just wanted people to see her kindness and also see her community spirit. And that’s why I took her away from being a biker chick. She wears Harley shirts and leather boots and stuff like that, and I didn’t want to show her that way.

Two Spirit
This painting is called Two-Spirit. This painting is a painting of a two-spirit, couple tma and Nick TMA is a lawyer. He teaches law in Nova Scotia. Nick is a photographer and what I was trying to portray was the closeness of this couple. There are two people who are friends of my dad and my sister. They’re both really smart and really fun to be around. And although you may not know these two men in particular, people like this, you are familiar with people in your own life that are like this couple, and I wanted to introduce you to them so that you can find that similarity.

Building a Teepee
This painting is called Building a Teepee. It’s about at Powwow, how all the teepees are erected on powwow grounds. Teepees are amazing architectural inventions, how they work. The teepee in foreground was part of a collaborative project I did with my community last year. I was asked by my band to paint the teepee. So, what I did was I created a giant paint by number set and I went home and I laid the teepee out into the stadium. I sketched out the design on the teepee, and then the community came by and painted it. Over 60 people came by. They signed up for different hour slots and they could paint the teepee. I didn’t want it to be my teepee. I wanted it to be the community’s teepee. I wanted it to belong to the community. And that’s what it does. It belongs to the community. It’s theirs because they own a triangle, or they own a figure. That is all part of their experience. It is a very communal event to raise a teepee.

Potato Dance
This painting is called Potato Dance. In this painting, the dots in the background, it’s a reference to T.C. Cannon. T.C. Cannon was an Oklahoma artist in the seventies that was kind of at the lead of contemporary indigenous art. I just wanted to throw a little tribute to T.C. Cannon in it. Potato dance is a traditional dance held at powwows, where two people hold a potato between them and try to keep the potato up. It’s one of the fun things at powwow. Powwow is a very fun community event, and I just wanted to epitomize the fun of that, but also including gender fluid people, kids, couples, just showing that everybody’s welcome to powwow and everybody can take part, that there’s no outsiders on a powwow ground, and that’s where it comes from.

Good Dog
This is a painting of my brother’s grandsons with my brother’s dog, who’s sadly passed now called Good Dog. But Charlie lived to be 18 years old. He was a great old dog. One of the boys, one of my nephews, is wearing a Res Boy. He’s just, again, it’s those subtle cues of being proudly indigenous, being unashamed of who you are as a person. So the Res Boy, t-shirt is just a statement about, yeah, I’m a res kid. I’m myself, I’m a res kid. So just embrace it and be proud of it.

Mask Maker
This painting is called Mask Maker. This is my friend Gordon Sparks. Gordon Sparks is an artist and tattoo artist based in Nova Scotia. Gordon is a brilliant mask maker who makes traditional Mi’kmaq masks from trees where he ceremonially pick trees. But I wanted to talk about the juxtaposition of a person. People cross the street when they see Gordon, they’re sometimes scared of his outward appearance, yet he’s one of the kindest, sweetest souls he’ll ever meet, who’s very in touch with his heritage and very in touch with how he creates his art. He’s a very gentle, kind man. And that’s what I wanted, to have that conversation, that he’s not everything he appears.

NDN
This painting is called NDN. There’s a lot of ties in the indigenous community to the hip-hop community. It comes from the same place. The hip-hop of New York and African American culture ties very well with hip-hop of res culture. And I wanted to show that. I wanted to portray that part of a young, strong, aggressive indigenous person. “NDN” is shorthand for “Indian” and just I wanted to put her out there. She’s forceful and strong. She’s actually a young artist from outside Oklahoma as well, and I just wanted to put her out there as someone who’s kind of in your face about it. She’s proud of her tats and she’s proud of her T-shirt that says, “Tested for Being Sick Ass. So yeah, I just wanted to show the power of a young artist.

Picnic Table
This painting is called Picnic Table. This scene actually came from a powwow. This scene actually takes place all the time, everywhere in every Newfoundland community. The title of the painting is called Picnic Table, but a subtitle is Ask the Locals, because if you have any kind of questions about a community, in this case, a powwow, and what’s going on and what to do and what protocols are, and what’s this all about, you just sit at a picnic table and ask the locals, and that’s what this is trying to show. It is trying to show that conversation between the locals and the tourists as to what’s going on in the community and there’s this guy off to the side who’s kind of, doesn’t want to be part of it, but he’s listening in anyway. The older gentleman off to the side, he’s listening in but he doesn’t want to say he’s interested. This is where this painting comes from. This painting comes from sharing knowledge and just asking questions, feeling free when you’re in a community to ask questions and just ask the locals and you’ll learn things.

Cousins Picking Berries
This painting is called Cousins Picking Berries. This was actually done during my residency here at Fogo, so I brought it back because it was a painting that was created here while I spent time here. It’s just showing a traditional thing that everybody did growing up. Everybody was thrown in the back of the pickup truck, and you went off and you did family activities, and one was to pick berries. The reason that they’re picking berries is that through the entire enrollment process for your status card, you got asked some dumb questions. They’re trying to prove that you’ve spent time on land, and one of ’em is: Have you picked berries? And really strange questions like that. So that’s why I call it “picking berries” because it’s one of those weird questions that shows up on your status card application. There’s a little political element to it as well of saying, “of course we pick berries. That doesn’t really make you native or not.”

Modern Family
This painting is called Modern Family. This is my cousin and my friend, artist Jordan Bennett, and his wife Amy LeBeouf, who’s also a visual artist, and their kids. I wanted to show a young, engaged family closeness, but I also wanted to throw in some indigenous markers. They’re reading a book on Mi’kmaq bugs and butterflies. Amy has traditional tattoos on her chin, as well as traditional markings on her arms and things like that. So, I wanted to have some small indigenous markers in there, but yet they’re a very open, fun, kind family. So that’s where this came from. Again, a lot of my work is: I want to introduce you to people that, though you may not know these particular people, you know people like them, and you can start your thoughts on, “Oh, these, remind me of my nieces and nephews,” or things like that.

Story Time
This painting is called Story Time. The background is very different because I wanted to make it fun and I wanted make it childlike. I thought of a Twister game. Now it’s not the same colors as Twister, but I wanted that graphic, fun element. Sometimes afterschool programs are a little intense and a little scary. I wanted to show this as warm and kind and fun. These are kids who are part of the afterschool program at First Light, which is the Native Friendship Center in St. John’s. It’s the afterschool programming, and again, I just wanted to show fun and comfort.