The new exhibition at the Mann Art Gallery explores identity, and cultural memory.
The Circle and the Dot is a mixed-media installation by Saskatoon artist Laura Hosaluk and had its opening reception on Thursday evening,
“I feel like this exhibition has been a long time coming,” Hosaluk said. “It was in 2022 that this work first premiered in Saskatoon at the Frances Morrison Library. I had applied for a Sask Arts grant and I didn’t receive the grant, but I received the exhibition. I put forth an idea to suspend and what I originally wanted to do, and the inspiration was to explore Pysanki.”
Hosaluk said that the original idea was to cast and suspend 1,000 ceramic eggs. She wound up moulding 1,000 rocks in wattle and daub. Wattle and daub is a composite building method that uses a woven lattice of wooden strips (“wattle”) as a framework, which is then covered with a daub made of a sticky material like wet soil, clay, sand, and straw. Wattle and daub was a common form of construction for settlers in Canada from Ukraine
“Earlier that year in reconciliation and celebration of Canada Day I had been doing a community arts project that celebrated our European ancestry and one way for me to reconnect with that was to reach back to an old Ukrainian building method of wattle and daub,” she explained.
The Canada Day project was done in collaboration with her friend the prominent Indigenous artist Joseph Naytowhow. Hosaluk said they wanted to create “a good story” about the Earth in response to the pandemic.
“That was how I came to work with reconnecting European learners with this ancestral building (and) architectural building of wattle and daub,” she explained.
From the original ceramic egg idea, she created 1,000 stones. They make up the piece entitled “Homeland” which is on display as you enter the gallery. Some of the stones have been fired and some have not.
For 15 years she has been serving as a community artist in Saskatchewan and creating environments for others to explore their creativity. After the original eggs idea she did receive a grant from Sask Arts.
“I’m grateful for Sask Arts because as much as I say I’m self-taught, I think I’m more self-acclaimed,” she explained. “I didn’t go through the traditional route of going to university. I practice or I studied with some pretty wonderful Saskatchewan crafts artists. That’s where I got my beginning and casting and bronze from a knife maker and artist.”
After learning that method she was curious and eventually wanted to explore what to do with medal moulds.
“This body of work is exploration using ceramic firing with these natural materials,” she said.
She said the name of the exhibition “The Circle and the Dot” was about her identity as well, and about honouring her ancestors. On a visit to the Ukrainian Museum of Canada she was drawn to a brown vinegar etching pysanky egg.
“I picked up a little book and taught myself how to do the pysanky and I found in the book that the circle and the dot represented,” she said. “It’s going to vary from region to region in
Ukraine, but as I understood it represent the tears of Mary. For me, I really connected with the tears of my mother.”
She said her mother is named Marilyn but both her paternal and maternal great grandmothers are named Mary
“For me, it really struck that conception of an identity of being a mother and a woman,” she said. “(It) brought tears. (I) just felt like ‘that’s hard work.’”
Hosaluk suffered the loss of her mother and her Ukrainian grandmother while working on the piece. As she was preparing for the end with her mother, she had a profound conversation.
“I asked my mother, ‘would you like to have bagpipes played at your funeral?’ She said, ‘Laura, we’re not Scottish, we are Canadian.’ I thought, ‘Oh my, is this the cancer? Speaking like what? What is this?’ I do feel like a large part of this work is the pain loss of culture, in the assimilation of becoming Canadian.”
Hosaluk was honoured to have this exhibition on display at the Mann Art Gallery.
“I did feel like I guess you know one of my great, great teachers told me once go wherever you’re invited, so in that sense I feel like a real guest. And I’ve been treated really good. It’s an honour,” she said.
The opening included a dance by KSAMB Dance Company, which is from Saskatoon but includes dancer Kyle Syverson and Mikki Mappin. Hosaluk said that she has a background in Ukrainian Ballet and eventually came to dance with KSAMB herself.
“For me, dance is a way to express myself,” she said. “It’s no different than through my hand, but instead of like painting or sculpture, I’m expressing through the body. I feel so alive and connected both to my environment, but mainly my body. I feel healthy. I feel good through dance and It really was something we did throughout the pandemic.”
While with KSAMB they would dance Contact Dance outdoors where dancers could not come within six feet of each other.
“When I originally imagined those 1,000 eggs that were to be suspended, I imagine dancers moving and contacting with those objects, and so this is that realisation of that having both Kyle and Mikki investigate and respond to this installation. It’s called a structured improvisation to the Circle and the Dot,” she said.
Following the interpretive dance there was an artist talk with Hosaluk.
With the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, Hosaluk also has felt a connection to her history.
“I think we are at a time in the world where we see a lot of things occurring that maybe aren’t happening here in Saskatchewan, but they are happening out in the world and there is a cause and effect to that,” she said.
As the descendent of another generation of Ukrainians who fled a war, Hosaluk said that when the war began she had people sending condolences.
“At that time I really felt like, wow,” she said. “I don’t know any living relative in Ukraine, and so this idea of them saying, ‘I’m sorry Laura’ had me kind of reconsider where I’m from and the injustices or things that are occurring here in Saskatchewan that we’re maybe a little more important.”
The Circle and the Dot runs from July 8 until Sept. 27 at the Mann Art Gallery.
michael.oleksyn@paherald.sk.ca
