Resilience

Bonnie Devine

Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) and member of Serpent River First Nation

  • Battle for the Woodlands (detail) – 2014, 2015
  • Acrylic paint, graphite, paper, felt and beads
  • 5.5 x 2.4 m (approximate)
  • Collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario
Battle for the Woodlands (detail)

The installation Battle for the Woodlands comprises several components and was constructed on site at the Art Gallery of Ontario in two separate six-week terms in 2014 and 2015.

My first intervention was to extend the large colonial map of Upper and Lower Canada that was affixed to the gallery wall. I wanted to include a full representation of the Great Lakes, because the original map depicted only Lakes Ontario and Erie, and I felt that no map of the Eastern Woodlands of North America should exclude its numinous and monumental heart, the life-giving waters of our home.

I painted them in red oxide and depicted them as animals: a buffalo, an otter, a turtle, a rabbit and a leviathan. I pictured them as spirit beings, for that is what they are.

– Bonnie Devine

2018 billboard locations

Treaty:

Please note that not all digital billboards will be displaying Resilience consistently. Treaty, territory, and language information has been referenced from Native Land, and may be incomplete.