Rebecca Belmore (Anishinaabekwe)
March 5, 1819
On view: JAN 17 >> MAR 5, 2025
Rebecca Belmore is an internationally recognized multidisciplinary artist from Lac Seul First Nation in Northern Ontario. Beginning January 17 the Gallery is pleased to present a film installation by Rebecca entitled March 5, 1819. Re-staging an under examined historic moment, Belmore collapses time and space to speak to the most pressing issues of our time, including water and land rights, women’s lives and dignity, and institutional violence against Indigenous people. This work is on loan from The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Image: Rebecca Belmore, March 5, 1819 (film still), 2008. Courtesy of the Rooms Provincial Art Gallery.
Artist Bio
Rebecca Belmore is a member of the Lac Seul First Nation (Anishinaabe) and an internationally recognized multidisciplinary artist. Rooted in the political and social realities of Indigenous communities, Belmore’s works make evocative connections between bodies, land, and language. Exhibiting across Canada and internationally since the early 90s, her major solo exhibitions include: Facing the Monumental, Art Gallery of Ontario (2018); Rebecca Belmore: Kwe, Justina M.Barnicke Gallery (2014); The Named and The Unnamed, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, (2002). In 1991, Ayumee-aawach Oomama-mowan: Speaking to Their Mother was created at the Banff Centre for the Arts with a national tour in 1992 and subsequent gatherings took place across the Canada in 1996, 2008, and 2014.
In 2017, Belmore participated in documenta 14 with Biinjiya’iing Onji (From Inside) in Athens, Greece and Kassel, Germany. In 2005, at the Venice Biennale, she exhibited Fountain in the Canadian Pavilion. Other group exhibitions include: Landmarks2017 / Reperes2017, Partners in Art (2017); Land Spirit Power, National Gallery of Canada (1992); and the IV Bienal de la Habana (1991).
Belmore received the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation’s VIVA Award (2004), the Hnatyshyn Visual Arts Award (2009), the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts (2013), and the Gershon Iskowitz Prize (2016). She received honourary doctorates from OCAD University (2005), Emily Carr University of Art + Design (2018), and NSCAD University (2019), and Audain Prize (2024).