Rebecca Belmore

Rebecca Belmore is an Aboriginal-Canadian artist who has been active since 1987, and whose main media includes installations and performances. Her identity both as an Aboriginal (Anishinaabe) and a woman form a huge part of her artistic identity; growing up, like many Native Americans, she faced issues of cultural-identity/rights and displacement. These would have an integral influence on her work as an artist as she addresses themes such as history, ethics, protest, identity, and voice. I choose to write about a video-installation, Fountain, which was exhibited for the 2005 Venice Biennale. The video itself is about three minutes long:

http://www.rebeccabelmore.com/exhibit/Fountain.html

Set along a shoreline littered with industrial ruins, the film opens with the ignition of a fire. The screen then cuts to the artist herself, gasping and struggling in the water as she tries to fill a bucket. Once she has filled the bucket, she emerges onto the shore, presumably carrying the water towards the burning fire (the viewer watches her as if part of he fire itself). However, once she tosses the water against the camera it turns red, a symbol for blood, and we see the stoic face of Belmore through the oozing blood for the remainder of the video.

One of the reasons I really liked this video was the ambiguity of it: we aren't sure if the burning fire is a good or bad thing, it could be both a symbol of destruction or birth of mankind. In that sense we could be witnessing a kind of primordial birth, the struggle for creation taking place in the water (where the origin of life occurred) and the blood acting as the literal lifeforce of man. On the other hand this could be apocalyptic, a destructive force overcoming a ruined landscape as a lone woman desperately tries to put a stop to this unraveling in vain. Thus the blood at the end signals a lost cause, an inevitable downfall seen in the eerie, stoic face of Belmore at the end.

When the video was actually exhibited, it was projected onto a "water screen", so as to bring the concept of the struggle in water one step closer to the viewer. I feel like this would have made the video more powerful; it involves the viewer so as to implicate them. As we watch Belmore struggle desperately in the water we, as viewers, remain passive. We realize how hopeless her plight is to put out an entire fire alone with a single bucket, yet we sit by and watch it happen.

Other installations and performances that I wish I had more time to write about include:

Vigil, arguably her most famous work created in response to the disappearances of a number of women, many of whom were presumed victims of serial murderer Robert Pickton. The video is of her 2002 performance on the sidewalk where one of the disappearances occurred.

Link to the video on her website:

http://www.rebeccabelmore.com/video/Vigil.html

Another one of my favorites is "Speaking to Their Mother", a description is given on her website:

"This artwork was my response to what is now referred to in Canadian history as the "Oka Crisis." During the summer of 1990, many protests were mounted in support of the Mohawk Nation of Kanesatake in their struggle to maintain their territory. This object was taken into many First Nations communities - reservation, rural, and urban. I was particularly interested in locating the Aboriginal voice on the land. Asking people to address the land directly was an attempt to hear political protest as poetic action."