Description
By Métis artist David Garneau. Edited by Arin Fay and Nic Wilson.
Dark Chapters brings together 17 poets, fiction writers, curators, and critics to engage with the works of David Garneau, the Governor General’s Award-winning Métis artist. Featuring paintings from Garneau’s still life series “Dark Chapters” alongside poetry, fiction, critical analysis, and autotheory, the book includes contributions from Fred Wah, Paul Seesequasis, Jesse Wente, Lillian Allen, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Larissa Lai, Susan Musgrave, and more.
A nod to the Reports of Truth and Reconciliation Commission, in which Justice Murray Sinclair describes the residential school system as “one of the darkest, most troubling chapters in our nation’s history,” Garneau’s still life paintings combine common objects (books, bones, teacups, mirrors) and less familiar ones (a Métis sash, a stone hammer, a braid of sweetgrass) to reflect the complexity of contemporary Indigenous experiences. Provocative titles like “Métis in the Academy” and “Smudge Before Reading” invite consideration of the mixed influences and loyalties faced by Indigenous students and scholars. Other paintings explore colonialism, vertical and lateral violence, Christian influence on traditional knowledge, and museum treatment of Indigenous belongings.
Rooted in Garneau’s life-long engagement at the intersections of visual art and writing, Dark Chapters presents a multifaceted reflection on the work of an inimitable, unparalleled artist.
David Garneau is a Métis painter, writer, curator, and educator who creates metaphorical still life paintings. Based on Treaty 4 lands, Saskatchewan, David Garneau is one of Canada’s foremost Métis artists, painters, and public intellectuals, who has been leading the charge in complex conversations around the nuances of Métis identity and the politics of Indigeneity, Indigenization, and non-colonial aesthetics in the colonized lands of Canada. He is the winner of the 2023 Governor General’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in Visual and Media Arts.