Rebecca Belmore: March 5, 1819
May 2, 2018
McMaster Museum of Art proudly presents:
Rebecca Belmore: March 5, 1819
McMaster Museum of Art Collection | Panabaker Gallery | May 10 – August 18, 2018
Since 1987, Anishinaabe artist Rebecca Belmore has addressed history, place, and identity through her consistently powerful and provocative multi-disciplinary works of art.
March 5, 1819 is a recently acquired video work that considers the frantic final moments before Demasduit, a young Beothuk woman (later renamed Mary March) is captured by colonists at Red Indian Lake in Newfoundland. Her husband Nonosabasut dies trying to save her.
Belmore’s re-enactment of this historical moment in contemporary dress, places the viewer into the middle of the event – as both witness and perpetrator – effectively bringing the historical struggle of Indigenous peoples in Canada viscerally into the present.
Rebecca Belmore (Anishinaabe/Canadian) is internationally recognized for her performance and installation art. Belmore was Canada’s official representative at the 2005 Venice Biennale (see short documentary below), received the Governor General’s Award for Visual and Media Art in 2013, and was awarded the 2016 Gershon Iskowitz Prize.
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