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Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

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Rebecca Belmore

artist (No. 2)

2014, printed 2020

On View in James M. Kemper Gallery, Room 3

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Over the past thirty years Rebecca Belmore has addressed the politics of Indigenous representation, voice, and identity through sculptures, installations, videos, photographs, and performances. In this performative self-portait, the artist, a member of the Lac Seul First Nation (Anishinaabe), stands with her back to the camera, wearing a bright-orange surveyor’s work jacket and pants. The fluorescent X of the jacket demarcates her torso against a huge orange tarp that covers a construction site in Winnipeg. The uniform she wears identifies the artist as a worker, but it also serves a political function. When signing land treaties with the British colonial government, Indigenous leaders often marked their names with an X. In wearing this highly visible sign in the changing Canadian cityscape, Belmore asserts her presence as both marker and maker, whose role, as she describes it, is to confront a barrier or obstacle: “For decades I have been working as the artist amongst my people, calling to the past, witnessing the present, standing forward, facing the monumental.” [Permanent Collection label, 2021]

  • Artist Rebecca Belmore (Anishinaabe, b. 1960)
  • Title artist (No. 2)
  • Date 2014, printed 2020
  • Medium Archival inkjet print mounted on Dibond
  • Edition description 1/3 + 1 AP
  • Dimensions image | 44 x 78 in.
    sheet | 44 x 78 in.
  • Credit line University purchase, Bixby Fund, and with funds from Helen Kornblum, 2021
  • Object number WU 2021.0004
  • Currently on View James M. Kemper Gallery, Room 3

Let Us Feel Heartbreak: Contemporary Art and the Environment
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 08/17/2024

Received 12/18/2020; Purchase approved by ACC 3/25/2021
From the artist through Jessica Bradley, Inc. (Toronto, Canada)

This artwork record may be incomplete or need refinement. Our staff actively researches the collection and revises records when new information is available. If you have questions or comments about this record, please contact us.

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