Bruno Canadien : Assail, Fight, Protest, Slam
Assail, Fight, Protest, Slam is a series of painted panels offering artistic resistance to the petroleum industry's occupation of First Nations' territories in northern Alberta - where ongoing development in the form of exploratory roads, test wells and pipelines has usually proceeded in the face of considerable native resistance. In this piece, four native communities currently engaged in ongoing disputes with Alberta's oil industry are represented. Their conflicts are well documented in the news media, prompting the exhibition title, taken piecemeal from recent newspaper headlines. Read literally, the work expresses Canadiens’ hope that the Northern Cree and Dene communities succeed in overcoming our provinces own version of “manifest destiny”.
Artist Biography
Bruno Canadien is Dene, and a member of the Deh Gáh Got’ie Koe First Nation, a Deh Cho Region member of the Dene Nation. He has been working as an artist since graduating from the Alberta College of Art’s Painting Department in 1993. His work, such as the Freedom Fighter Series, discusses issues of contemporary presence and resistance of and by First Nations in the Americas. Bruno’s work is included in the collections of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Glenbow Museum, the Red Deer Museum and the Indian Art Centre in Ottawa. Bruno, originally from Denendeh (NWT), currently resides with his wife Amy in the foothills community of Black Diamond, AB.