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On the streets of Winnipeg, public art is tough art.
It has to be. Physically, it exists in extreme elements, weathering cold, snow and ice for half the year, while enduring sometime scorching temperatures the other half.
Its subject matter can be necessarily tough too.
Case in point: On Tuesday morning, Aug. 3, the 150th anniversary of the signing of Treaty 1, Winnipeg artist KC Adams unveiled a sculpture placed in the Peace Meeting Site, just south of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Constructed of steel and concrete, it is titled Tanisi keke totamak …. Ka cis teneme toyak, which translates as “What can we do, to respect each other.”
Its subject is the fiery meeting of Indigenous peoples and white settlers. Adams, who said she is “part Cree, part Ojibwa and part British,” symbolizes those two forces, atop a powwow drum, as “the benevolent spirit Wesakechak and the Wolf.”
“Wesakechak represents the Indigenous People, and the Wolf represents settlers,” Adams explains. “Wesakechak is a carrier of knowledge: community, family, land, water, plants, creatures, and the spirit world. The Wolf brings forth wisdom and power when embodying ‘community’ but is disastrous when acting as a lone wolf.”
Adams says public art allows everybody access to art in the spaces where they live, work or meet, away from the often prohibitive spaces of the galleries, museums and office towers.
“For many years prior to this, Indigenous artists were left out of the equation,” Adams says. “In fact, our story was left out of the equation.
“With a lot of public art, the only place we existed was at the base of the sculpture of a settler or an explorer or a conqueror.
“We were always left at the bottom, if we were in the conversation at all,” she says. “Sometimes we weren’t even part of the sculpture.”
Public art brings not only access but representation to the people the artists want to reach.
“It’s incredibly meaningful that we’re all having our voices heard,” Adams says. “My son hopefully in the future will have children and show his children or his grandchildren this piece and say, ‘I helped with that.’ ‘My mother made this.’
“Personally, it’s very meaningful but it’s also very empowering for my community...