2007 / Vancouver, BC / Photograph
2007 / Plan Large, Quartier Éphémère, Montreal, PQ / Billboard
As an Indigenous woman, my female body speaks for itself. Some people interpret the image of this reclining figure as a cadaver. However, to me it is a wound that is on the mend. It wasn’t self-inflicted, but nonetheless, it is bearable. She can sustain it. So it is a very simple scenario: she will get up and go on, but she will carry that mark with her. She will turn her back on the atrocities inflicted upon her body and find resilience in the future. The Indigenous female body is the politicized body, the historical body. It’s the body that doesn’t disappear.
Rebecca Belmore, in conversation with Kathleen Ritter, Vancouver Art Gallery, April 19, 2008
Photo credit: Henri Robideau, Guy L’Heureux / Quartier Éphémère (billboard installation)
