Post #90

Recreating This Place Through Commemoration and Fauna in the Urban Setting: Fish/Scale art in Winnipeg

I was introduced to the art form using whitefish ‘fish scales’ through a symposium held virtually through the Winnipeg Art Gallery in the spring of 2022. I was immediately fascinated – and intimidated – by the fine motor skills needed by Metis artist Erin Konsmo (aka Land Glitter), to manipulate and create with a medium so tiny in scale. I was additionally intrigued by their dedication to use ‘all the gifts of the fish’, and the engagement of reciprocity within their chosen art practice.¹ As I currently study public art and other ‘ruptures’, I witness the fish again, this time through the mural titled Fish/Scale 2020, located at Phar Syde Convenience, 618 Main Street in Winnipeg. This mural painted by Erin Konsmo, has been aptly titled as a play on words, as it at once refers to the whitefish’s actual ‘scales’ and to the large ‘scale’ format of the artwork.² Fish/Scale was part of the Wall-to-Wall Mural and Culture Festival which enabled Konsmo to transform a micro art into macro art.³ According to the Wall to Wall website, Konsmo believes the public “who interact with this art to see the beauty of fish from a Métis form and feel as though they are connected to the waters in more urban areas of the city.”⁴

Serena Keshavjee speaks about Metis history as a thriving settlement at the Red River, which became a metropolitan centre filled with eager white settlers who added East-West railroad axes to the Indigenous and Metis river trade lines,⁵ which included the removal of many Metis peoples. Fish/Scale reminds viewers of complicated history of the city while juxtaposing the fish as a person in the urban landscape and educating the public about the Metis designs of fish scale art, that artists like Konsmo are utilizing and reinterpreting.

This work furthermore connects to Black and Sinclair’s essay “Re-creating this place: Indigenous Public Art at the Centre of Turtle Island” in that this mural is set within the heart of Turtle Island and works to subvert Canada’s systemic racism through an exemplar for other communities to follow.⁶ Fish/Scale is sitespecific due to its close proximity to the actual fish swimming though the City of Winnipeg, along the rivers Assiniboine and Red. This remembrance of the fish as a life-giver and diet-sustainer ‘swims’ along the urban concrete wall at 618 Main Street. In the provoking thoughts set out by Black and Sinclair, it is not only critically connected to the land, history of place, and Indigenous and Metis survivance in the city, the mural also addresses the TRC’s 79th call to action through commemoration, and incorporation of landscape, flora, fauna, and community of our province.⁷

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1 “Mawachichitotaak: Metis Studies Studies Symposium”, Winnipeg Art Gallery. May 3-6, 2022.

2 Fish/Scale 2020, Walltowallwpg.com. Retrieved from https://www.walltowallwpg.com/fishscale.

3 Fish/Scale (2020).

4 Fish/Scale (2020).

5 Serena Keshavjee, “Modelling Access Through Artistic Intervention in Treaty 1 Territory”, Holding Ground: Nuit Blanche and Other Ruptures, Edited by Julie Nagam and Janine Marchessault, 2022.

6 Honoure Black & Niiganwewidam James Sinclair, “Re-creating this place: Indigenous Public Art at the Centre of Turtle Island”, Holding Ground: Nuit Blanche and Other Ruptures, 2022.

7 Black & Sinclair, “Re-creating this place”.


Sources:

Black, Honoure & Niiganwewidam James Sinclair. “Re-creating this place: Indigenous Public Art at the Centre of Turtle Island”. Holding Ground: Nuit Blanche and Other Ruptures. Edited by Julie Nagam and Janine Marchessault. 2022.

Fish/Scale 2020, Walltowallwpg.com. Retrieved from https://www.walltowallwpg.com/fishscale.

Keshavjee, Serena. “Modelling Access Through Artistic Intervention in Treaty 1 Territory”. Holding Ground, Nuit Blanche and Other Ruptures. Edited by Julie Nagam and Janine Marchessault. 2022.

“Mawachichitotaak: Metis Studies Studies Symposium”, Winnipeg Art Gallery. May 3-6, 2022.

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Patricia Dyck