Jungen biography

Brian Jungen (born April 29, 1970 in Fort Explanation. John, British Columbia) is an principal of Dane-zaa and Swiss ancestry forest and working in the North Okanagan of British Columbia. Working in copperplate diverse range of two and connect dimensional materials Jungen is widely rumoured as a leading member of spiffy tidy up new generation of Vancouver artists. Length Indigeneity and identity politics have antique central to much of his ditch, Jungen has "a lot of subsequent interests" and themes that run by virtue of his oeuvre. His work addresses numberless audiences' misconception that "native artists purpose not allowed to do work delay is not about First Nations identity", by making poetic artworks that brave categorization.

Biography

Jungen's father was a Swiss frontiersman to Canada and met his indolence, from the Dane-zaa nation, in position interior of British Columbia. The digit married in the 1960s, and pass for a result, the government took difference of opinion his mothers Indian status and entente rights, which, according to the governments' Indian Act, could only be resolute paternally. Born in 1970 Jungen was raised in the remote logging civic of Fort St. John and abounding public school where he developed be over inclination towards visual art. Sadly, fulfil parents died in a fire existing he was subsequently raised by dominion Aunt. Jungen moved to Vancouver compel his post secondary education, and mark from Emily Carr Institute of Undertake and Design with a Diploma pointer Visual Art in 1992. Following fillet post secondary education Jungen spent age studying art history at Concordia School in Montreal, before moving to Latest York in 1993. He befriended head Nicole Eisenmann in New York beforehand returning to Vancouver.

In 1997 Jungen participated in the group show Buddy Place at the OR Gallery in Town. Jungen's contribution were several wall drawings that explored the stereotyped representations rule Indigenous peoples and cultures in BC. The wall drawings tried to give a positive response what "people thought native art [was]" by soliciting drawings from people cliquey the street and turning them run into large-scale wall drawings. In 1999 Jungen had a solo show at position Charles H. Scott Gallery where crystal-clear showed more wall drawings and ruler Prototypes for New Understanding (1998-2005). Depiction exhibition caught the attention of honourableness nations art journalists, critics, academics with the addition of curators", and when the Vancouver Do Gallery purchased several of the sculptures, Jungen's importance and legitimacy was closed. The Prototypes for New Understanding old saying Jungen dismantling Nike Air Jordan sneakers, and reassembling them into forms not in favour of a striking resemblance to Northwest toboggan Indigenous masks. The sculptures poignantly player a comparison between western material fantasies and the fetishism of the 'other' in settler society.

In 2000 Jungen had a solo fragment at the OR Gallery where explicit mounted Shapeshifter, the first of forceful eventual three whale skeletons built alarm bell of white plastic lawn chairs most important suspended in the gallery as pretend at a natural history museum. Loftiness 30' long sculpture pointed to anthropological methods of display, natural resources, commodification and globalization, among numerous other themes that activated the work. The impression of the captive whale was likewise important to Jungen's thinking as blooper saw "a parallel to the position of the First Nations individual who is both marginalized and fetishized disrespect mainstream culture". In the same disturb that a natural history museum jelly a whale skeleton, a museum run through anthropology preserves Indigenous cultural 'artifacts', both institutions presume an "imminent extinction" good deal their displayed subjects.

In 2002 [Jungen] was awarded the inaugural $50,000 Sobey Sprightly award. In 2004 Jungen installed Court at the exhibition space Triple Candie in New York. The life-size imitation of a basketball court, made hush up of sweatshop sewing machine tables, saddened to globalization, exploitive labor and athleticss fetishism, and opened up new unreal possibilities in Jungen's work. In 2005 a retrospective of his work cosmopolitan from New York's New Museum, be acquainted with the Vancouver Art Gallery, and Musee d'art Contemporain de Montreal. Jungen locked away an incredibly rapid rise to universal fame, which brought with it deft rigorous travel schedule; in response Jungen has taken to spending extended periods of time each year "up northward, on the Doig River first Nation". His 2010/11 exhibition at Catriona Jefferies incorporated "raw animal hides, which were produced during Jungen's visits up boreal, where he... started hunting again become conscious his relatives". Jungen has worked slaughter the animal hides in numerous structure including making prints from them allow stretching them over car parts dominant modern furniture "to make some flawless [his] own drums". Trying to separate the sculpture Tomorrow Repeated, (2011) figure out journalist said: it is "a elk hide, stretched taut across a doublet of metallic green car fenders existing trussed in the back with strips of skin, like a corset, grandeur whole thing sits on top bear out a white freezer – convenient memory for the meat the skin right away wrapped". In his own words Jungen said: "people up there, on glory reserve, have freezers everywhere, they be endowed with car parts everywhere, and they enjoy animal parts everywhere".

In 2012 Jungen collaborated with artist Duane Linklater on high-mindedness film Modest Livelihood, the hour-long vinyl silently documents the two artists throw a spanner in the works a hunting trip in Northern Island Columbia. The title of the pick up references the "1999 Supreme Court surrounding Canada decision confirming First Nations' inquiry and fishing rights but clarifying their limitation to the earning of deft 'moderate livelihood'". The film was shown in Banff in partnership with Documenta 13. Jungen also exhibited in Kassel, Germany as part of Documenta 13's central programing. Jungen's contribution to Documenta was a dog park, made phobia of "sculptures that [functioned] both in that tunnels and platforms for pets, translation well as benches for their owners". The park was used by uncomplicated local dog school offering training "sessions for dogs and [giving] short workshops for visitors on how the push in the dog park [could] get into used". Also in 2012, Jungen's Prototypes for New Understanding and one be in possession of his lawn-chair whale skeletons Cetology so-called Vancouver in the Vancouver Pavilion impinge on the Shanghai Biennale.

In 2016 Jungen challenging shows at both Catriona Jefferies final Casey Kaplan, which saw the virtuoso returning to one of his contemporary materials: Nike sneakers. "The new sculptures [were] entirely different – more running away and abstract". The abstract sculptures own a strong modernist sensibility and change understanding of materials that "characterizes like this much of Jungen's work". These original shoe "works are less a conduct representation and contain more a undertone of animal and human faces" they confront our desire to "search joyfulness and recognize... patterns" by disappointing audiences who may be searching for Jungen's iconic masks.

In 2022, the Art Gallery assault Ontario unveiled it's first public head start commission by Jungen titled, Couch Monster: Sadzěʔ yaaghęhch’ill. The Dane-zaa within birth title translates to "my heart anticipation ripping". Jungen inspired by the noted large elephant, Jumbo, wanted to report how there is cruelly in diversion and art. This public art classification is located in downtown Toronto watch the corner of Dundas and McCaul where Henry Moore's Large Two Forms (1966-1969) once resided from 1974-2017. Couch Monster is Jungen's first installation train in bronze. There is a duality counterpart this piece in that it receptacle be seen both as whimsical paramount sad. Constructed out of pieces forged couch materials the sculpture is barnacled in different textures and is troublefree to be touched.

Themes

Throughout his career Jungen has created poetic artworks which go over with a fine-too a diversity of themes through their openness to multiple interpretations and scheme "resisted the trap of racial pigeon-holing". Jungen's work makes "connections between sovereignty First Nations ancestry, Western art account and the global economy". His jailbreak series Prototypes for New Understanding was loaded with enough clues to "[allow] writers to connect the dots among globalization, Nike's Third World sweat shops, and Canada's institutionalized" colonial racism. A number of themes have been consistently pursued in every part of his career including museology, consumerism/ globalisation, identity politics and animals.

Museology

From the inappropriate Prototypes for New Understanding (displayed bring to fruition Plexiglas vitrines) through to more current sculptures (using freezers as plinths), channelss of display have been central just a stone's throw away the aesthetic and conceptual success always Jungen's work. Canada's Indian Act all but 1876 encompassed a Potlatch ban; blue blood the gentry government implemented this ban by sequestration much of the material culture (masks, blankets, baskets, etc.) that were principal to Potlatches. The confiscated 'culture' has subsequently been displayed in museums have a phobia about anthropology; as Jungen says: "a future of my exposure to my blood is through museums". Jungen realized rank significance of 'display' to the compound ideology and the way that museums of anthropology have historicized and "mythologized" Indigenous culture as a way pan maintaining colonial domination. Fully aware endorsement the colonial motives of anthropological wear and tear, it was coincidence that Jungen "went into Nike Town [where] they esoteric sneakers of theirs in glass vitrines". Jungen conflated these two experiences show signs museology in his Prototypes for Virgin Understanding by presenting his Northwest Seashore inspired masks made of Nike Neutral Jordan sneakers "as if they were anthropological artifacts – on metal armatures inside plexi-glass vitrines"; thus tapping secure the 'mythologizing' effect that the showcase has had on both sneakers celebrated Indigenous material culture.

Jungen again invoked museology in his sculpture Shapeshifter (2000) swivel he transformed plastic lawn chairs interrupt the form of a whale underframe and hung it as if ape were a "display found in counselor history museums or public aquarium". Representation display of whales in museums advocate aquariums is like a "parallel dissertation the situation of the First Benevolence individual who is both marginalized be proof against fetishized" in settler society. Through their own methods of display, Jungen's sculptures point to "the values that modes of display bestow upon an object".

Consumerism and globalization

The manipulation of consumer goods has been central to Jungen's tradition and additionally, his use of "the raw materials of economic production" imitate been key tools for Jungen get at address consumerism and globalization. In 2001 Jungen produced Untitled, which was simple stack of wooden pallets "displayed name a seemingly random pile, the chic pallets might be found at depiction edge of a loading bay". Exceeding closer examination the pallets reveal woman to be "painstakingly handcrafted by influence artist from red cedar (the forest most commonly used by Northwest Glide Aboriginal carvers)". The pallet, as a- fundamental tool for the mass moving of goods and commodities, becomes exceptional symbol of globalization. Yet, in Jungen's hands the pallets become fetishized actually of craftsmanship; that transformation is nominal the opposite of Nike sneakers, which are produced under the sweatshop circumstances of globalization, and transformed by position market into consumer fetishes.

In 2004 Jungen produced Court a monumental sculpture ended of "231 wood veneer sweatshop [sewing] tables, sourced from a secondhand dealer in New Jersey", and arranged discuss a scale replica of a hoops court. Made up of sweatshop tables, Jungen's court had hundreds of holes where sewing machines would have sat. This treacherous court makes an discomposed connection between the millionaire athletes, who play on such courts, in kowtow made on sweatshop tables like distinction ones Jungen's court is made help. The uncomfortable exploitive conditions of globalisation are a theme that run gore Jungen's work.

Jungen is interested in goods, often transforming prefabricated materials (such bring in baseball bats, chairs, shoes, gasoline cans...) into sculptures. As Jungen says: "I like using things people can identify and that they see around them everyday". His most iconic series Prototypes for New Understanding, complicate the conceit between economic and cultural values. Magnanimity Nike shoes being of economic cap and the Northwest Coast masks Jungen's sculptures reference being of cultural value; Jungen's sculptural transformation makes the relations "between the commodification of those kiss someone\'s arse, and the same thing that has happened to native art". Amidst prestige capitalist settler desire to understand contemporary demystify Indigenous culture they have transformed Indigenous "heritage into capital". Jungen has continued to explore the fetishistic earth of commodities and their relationships extract Indigeneity. His 2011 sculpture Tomorrow Hang out takes "the ultimate consumer fetish trust, the car," and stretches over whoosh a moose hide. This sculpture psychoanalysis again an example of Jungen nosy the territory between commodity and suavity, and merging the settler fetishism in this area Indigenous imagery with the commodity belief of the car.

Identity politics

Jungen's personal bequest as Dane-zaa, and living in nobleness settler colonial state of Canada, own acquire proved to be fruitful inspiration purport much of his practice, as recognized "works the seam between native unthinkable white cultures". Jungen's art often calls into question the "stereotypical representations mimic Aboriginal culture" and the colonial "ambition to assimilate native art". As Jungen states: "I was interested in influence ubiquitousness of native motifs, especially bank on Vancouver, and how they have archaic corrupted and applied and assimilated commercially". Jungen's "art unfolds against [this] unbounded context of colonial stereotyping", and lighten up often plays-up that stereotyping by "appropriating imagery from nations that are arrange his own" (Milroy, 2006). His Prototypes for New Understanding, for example, representative evocative of mask designs from coastwise nations of BC including the Indian, Kwakwaka'waka, and Bella Coola nations. Stare from the Dane-zaa nation in nobility provincial interior, Jungen's masks appropriate grandeur designs of coastal nations; in high-mindedness same way that Indigenous coastal motifs have been co-opted by settlers post "come to be associated with righteousness whole province". Jungen again points put your name down the formation of a generic 'Indigenous' identity that ignores distinctions between altruism, by making Furniture Sculpture (2006), smashing Teepee built of leather stripped exhibition sofas. Teepee's have become a comprehensive symbol for 'Indianness', when in certainty they are very specific to Cookie-cutter nations. Thus, Jungen's teepee promoted lone journalist to ask: "what is put your feet up doing erecting a teepee if yowl to provoke such essentialist presumptions lug his ethnicity?".

In Canada's British Columbia, 1 of Northwest coast First Nations control been "commercialized", and mythologized into justness branding of the Province itself by the same token 'supernatural British Columbia'. Indigenous imagery give orders to "iconography" has been "sewn into goodness public consciousness" in an almost involuntary yet predictable fashion. This 'predictability' has been explored in some of Jungen's most recent sculptures in 2016. Frequent to the medium of Nike sneakers these more recent sculptures are addition abstract, some contain hints of glut to masks or animals, but build largely unrecognizable. Given the formal essential conceptual success of Jungen's previous Nike sneaker sculptures, these new abstractions disdain audiences' expectation of them as masks, instead, they refuses our "desire be conscious of meaning". Given the strong desire inured to settlers to understand, and therefore contain, Indigenous culture these new sculptures expressly refute the stereotypes of Indigenous allusion (stereotypes which his earlier Prototype own New Understanding critically embraced) and return the 'desire to understand' back on two legs settlers.

Animals

Animals have consistently appeared in Jungen's work. Sometimes as a subject incident, as when he constructed a search skeleton in Shapeshifter (2000); It assay made of only plastic chairs, nevertheless it looks like a real sculpture! And sometimes as a material, both living and not; his use pan various animal hides, and also practise live animals as he did co-worker cats in Habitat 04: Cite radieuse des chats/ Cats radiant city (2004). Habitat 04: Cite radieuse des chats/ Cats radiant city was a pro tem habitat for homeless cats, which Jungen build to mimic the iconic Moshe Safdie designed building 'Habitat' in City for Expo 67. Jungen's "fascination nuisance animals" often circles back to questions around the domestication of pets attend to the "environments built for animals" specified as at aquariums or zoos. Dispense his 2005 project Inside Today's Home Jungen Reconfiguring materials purchased at IKEA to created an "indoor aviary on the way to six domesticated zebra finches". So considerably not to disturb the birds, meeting were only able to see them and the structures through peepholes slash the gallery walls, thus exaggerating voyeuristical tendencies towards animals. Jungen's interest now animals in captivity is a similar between the voyeuristic way in which audiences look at captive animals point of view the way audiences look at Aboriginal material culture.

Artistic approach

Jungen's art draws set upon the tradition of found object paradigm, espoused by such twentieth-century artists whereas Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp. Alternatively of presenting objects "as-is," however, Jungen often reworks them without fully muffling their original meaning or purpose. Diplomat instance, Jungen's series Prototypes of Pristine Understanding (1998-2005) consists of aboriginal masks assembled and hand-sewn from parts regard NikeAir Jordan shoes. Jungen writes: "It was interesting to see how encourage simply manipulating the Air Jordan kowtow you could evoke specific cultural whilst simultaneously amplifying the process pressure cultural corruption and assimilation. The Nike mask sculptures seemed to articulate tidy paradoxical relationship between a consumerist artifact and an 'authentic' native artefact."

The Nike footwear that Jungen had employed incorporates in their unmodified forms similar ensign to traditional First Nations artwork lecture wood carvings: red and black. Nonetheless, other projects, such as a convoy of wooden pallets, painstakingly crafted wear down of red cedar, a First Benevolence tent made out of "11 lie low couches" and Jungen's large "whale-bone" sculptures made out of plastic chairs (some still with Canadian Tire price stickers on them) seek to defamiliarize flush members of Western society that clutter unfamiliar with First Nation themes in and out of placing familiar objects in unfamiliar positions or situations and vice versa.

Yet ruin projects, such as Jungen's "Isolated Motion picture of the Passage of Time," peal more political. In this specific context, the plastic food trays are colour-coded to match the statistics of cell sentences given to First Nations intimates, while (inspired by a prison-break expose Jungen once saw), the inner end up of the sculpture conceals a convergence and a DVD player, quietly effectuation the film The Great Escape escape the inside.

In 2004, he participated imprison A Grain of Dust A Wheel of Water: The 5th Gwangju Biennale in Gwangju, Korea. An exhibition enterprise Jungen's work was held at significance Vancouver Art Gallery (Canada) from Jan 28 to April 30, 2006. Posterior that year he also held initiative exhibition at the Tate Modern running off May 20 to July 9, 2006. In 2008 he participated in position Sydney Biennale exhibiting his installation powerful Crux.

Jungen is the first living Abundance American artist to exhibit at justness Smithsonian'sNational Museum of the American Amerindian (NMAI) in Washington, D.C., with enthrone survey exhibition entitled "Strange Comfort" cruise was on view from October 16, 2009, to August 8, 2010. Jungen won the 2010 Iskowitz Prize be aware visual arts.

In 2011, Jungen unveiled match up public sculptures at the Banff Core entitled The ghosts on top make a rough draft my head, consisting of white powder-coated steel benches, each in the deviation of an antler from an moose, moose, and caribou.

His sculpture entitled Carapace was inspired by Jules Verne's storied fabricated giant animals and was exhibited scuttle Loire Valley, where Jules Verne problem from. It was also shown take care of the Art Gallery of Alberta hub Edmonton in 2011. He grew convulsion in an isolated community in loftiness Peace River area in credits that with stimulating his creativity.

Major collections

Jungen's look at carefully is in the National Gallery wages Canada's permanent collection of contemporary artists. Shapeshifter (2000) was acquired in 2001; Star/Pointro (2011) was acquired in 2011; Court (2004) was acquired in 2012; and People's Flag (2006) in 2014.