TANYA HARNETT

Nadia Myre exhibited four enormous, heavily beaded, graphic identities devoid of text—her Journey of the Seventh Fire series. This series represents logos of Quebec mining and hydro companies, and by omitting the text elements of these corporate graphics, Myre keeps them nameless icons of industry. These works were hung on the far end of Truck’s gallery, so that initially their computer-graphic origins had us reading the images as large, flat fields of pure colour. But in a manner similar to Cuthand’s work, the view seen from a distance is quite different from the one seen under closer inspection. In each piece, there are several hundreds of hours of work executed by people participating in a collective beading.

This sea of beadwork has patches with thousands and thousands of beads, a quantity that prompts us to recognize the time, dedication and contemplation that must have occurred during the act of making these artworks. Here, acting from her own artistic and cultural territory, Myre identifies a corporate collective with an “invisible hand,” and she encourages us to note what that collective is doing to the land. Myre also ensures that these actions are being noted (and made visible) using a widely understood Aboriginal visual language.