Featuring the art of Barry Ace, Coalesce is a fusion of distinct Anishinaabeg aesthetics of the Great Lakes region with refuse from Western society’s technological and digital age in order to intentionally shift an object’s materiality and its accepted paradigm within the physical world.
It is through the integration and juxtaposition of recognizable materials used in the making of Anishinaabeg material culture, such as glass beads and porcupine quills, with new-found materials, such as electronic components (capacitors and resistors), that this body of work disproves any notion of Anishinaabeg cultural stasis. Coalesce demonstrates the continuum of Anishinaabeg innovation and expression by making use of disparate materials that knowingly coalesce and segue seamlessly into contemporary Anishinaabeg artistic tradition and material culture.
Barry Ace is an Anishnaabe (Odawa) visual artist, writer, and educator who lives in Ottawa. A band member of M’Chigeeng First Nation in Manitoulin Island, his mixed media, assemblage, and textile works draw from various aspects of Anishnaabeg culture to explore cultural continuity and the confluence of the historical and contemporary. Ace has exhibited his works in important international venues, including the American Indian Community House Gallery in New York, the Nordamerika Native Museum in Zurich, and the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts.
Suzanne Luke is the Curator of the Robert Langen Art Gallery at Wilfrid Laurier University.
Armand Garnet Ruffo was born in Chapleau, northern Ontario, and draws on his Ojibwe heritage for his writing. He is the recipient of the 2020 Latner Writers’ Trust Poetry Prize. His publications include Norval Morrisseau: Man Changing Into Thunderbird (2014) and Treaty # (2019), both finalists for Governor General’s Literary Awards. He teaches at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
Barry Ace is an Anishnaabe (Odawa) visual artist, writer, and educator who lives in Ottawa. A band member of M’Chigeeng First Nation in Manitoulin Island, his mixed media, assemblage, and textile works draw from various aspects of Anishnaabeg culture to explore cultural continuity and the confluence of the historical and contemporary. Ace has exhibited his works in important international venues, including the American Indian Community House Gallery in New York, the Nordamerika Native Museum in Zurich, and the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts.
