The National Gallery of Canada explores the many colours and contradictions of our coldest season in its newest exhibition. Winter Count: Embracing the Cold is the first major collaboration between the gallery’s Canadian, European and Indigenous curatorial departments.
Featuring over 160 works spanning two centuries, the exhibition is named for the tradition among many Plains peoples to record the passing of each year with a single image painted onto buffalo hide, a reminder of how the land shaped the rhythm of their lives. It’s also the title of a large installation of tipi covers from Cree artist Duane Linklater, which feature markings alluding to residential school unmarked graves and fill an entire room.
The Ottawa gallery was in the process of acquiring Linklater’s work when the curators began planning this exhibition, which opened in November and runs until March 22.
“In my Omaskêko Cree culture, if we were to translate how old are you, that would literally be saying how many winters are you,” explained Linklater in the exhibition’s catalogue. “If we are looking at a lifetime of a person, that person is half winter, the sort of way I look at it.”
Wahsontiio Cross, associate curator of Indigenous art, named Wendy Red Star’s Winter, from her Four Seasons series, and Krystle Silverfox’s Spear Game as other priority pieces she wanted to include.
Red Star’s striking piece playfully critiques museum dioramas that portrayed cultural habitats perpetuating the myth of the “vanishing Indian”. Adorned in traditional regalia from her Crow Nation, the artist’s wintery self-portrait is surrounded by Styrofoam snowballs and bird ornaments.
“She is in these landscapes that are very obviously staged,” said Cross. “She is engaging with the history of representation, but she is her own subject. So, she has taken back that agency.”
Silverfox’s installation features 16 brightly coloured spears or “snow snakes” flying through the air at different angles. Drawing inspiration from her Northern Tutchone culture in the Yukon, the work evokes the excitement of throwing the snow snake the longest to win the game.
Since creating its Indigenous Ways and Decolonization department in 2022, the gallery has hired more Inuit staff than any other southern gallery. The first Inuk to hold a permanent curatorial position at a Canadian institution is Jocelyn Piirainen, originally from Iqaluktuuttiaq (Cambridge Bay).
In developing Winter Count, Cross and Piirainen worked extensively with senior curators Katerina Atanassova and Anabelle Kienle Ponka to select artwork that occasionally enabled provocative juxtapositions of artistic narratives from different times and places.
“In our opening room, there’s a large painting by Kent Monkman,” said Piirainen. “All of Kent’s work looks at how Indigenous peoples have been portrayed in historical paintings, especially with his character of Miss Chief at the forefront. To the left of this work, we have two historical Canadian paintings we definitely wanted to have that relationship between.”
Commenting on Paul Kane’s portrayal of a settler journeying by dogsled with two Indigenous guides in the distant background, Monkman inserts his powerful and flamboyant alter ego into Charged Particles in Motion, hurtling past the overturned sled of a settler.
Knowing contemporary Indigenous artists who have challenged dominant myths about the Great White North would be highlighted, Atanassova said she chose works from settlers that would provide appropriate contrast. The exhibition’s catalogue illuminates how settler artists often produced nostalgic imagery that misrepresented Indigenous communities.
“There was always this concentric idea of starting from the Indigenous systems and building that backward,” said Ponka. “We whittled it down to seven themes so there would be juxtapositions and dialogue that ultimately would make our visitors think about winter in a different way.”
Several works by famous artists Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro are interspersed with Canadians like Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté and Maurice Cullen, who were inspired by the Parisian Impressionists to paint outside in the frosty air. Atanassova said artistic interpretations of the season demonstrate evolving outlooks over time.
“The development of winter as a subject in Canadian settler art reflects broader shifts in artistic styles, cultural identity and national consciousness,” shared Atanassova. “Encompassing both the inhospitable surroundings and the warmth of the community … we find powerful hints of our collective and individual identities.”
Ponka reflected on how works from the Ontario-based Group of Seven have recently been scrutinized for their romanticization of nature and alleged erasure of Indigenous narratives. She said, “Art’s relationship to colonial history underscores the need for a more inclusive understanding of the landscape.”
Eastmain-born artist Shirley Cheechoo’s painting Cleaning Moose Hide draws from memories of her childhood as part of her healing process following residential school, pushing the boundaries of naturalistic expression by distilling forms to their most essential elements. She later gained widespread acclaim for her theatre and film work, founding the Weengushk Film Institute on Manitoulin Island, Ontario.
The exhibition features a wide range of First Nations and Inuit prints, sculptures, ceramics and textiles, including a traditional pair of Cree mittens. More recent additions, like the brightly coloured Mother Hubbard Parka, demonstrate the influence in Inuit communities of a fur-trading family that came from Alaska in the 1930s.
Loans from Toronto’s Bata Shoe Museum reveal stylistic similarities between Inuit boots and other circumpolar Indigenous nations. Regional differences can be observed between sealskin-based coastal garments and those with caribou fur found more inland. Ivory snow goggles show the artistic ingenuity of the Inuit.
“I hope people walk away feeling that connection between the artworks in the show and a connection that so many artists have to their ancestry and to their culture,” said Cross. “Visitors are very surprised and delighted by how these artworks come together.”