Mercer Union is delighted to present a solo exhibition by Duane Linklater titled From Our Hands, with Ethel Linklater (Trapper) and Tobias Linklater. Working across installation, performance, film, and photography, Duane Linklater excavates histories to unearth folds and knots addressing cultural loss, recovery and sovereignty. Unearthing work hidden beneath gallery walls or re-inserting iconic Indigenous imagery inscribed within Canadian identity, he explores the migration and exchange of knowledge and ideas, and their consequences.
The title of this exhibition From Our Hands refers to an exhibition which toured Ontario between 1983 and 1985 presenting Indigenous craft, and including the work of Ethel Linklater, Duane’s grandmother, which are re-presented within the galleries and displayed on new support structures. That this loan was negotiated by Mercer Union through the Thunder Bay Art Gallery mobilizes present day structural relations of cultural heritage while highlighting traces of genealogy and questions of legacy. This intergenerational relationship is extended in the presentation of a recent claymation film by Duane’s twelve year old son, Tobias Linklater.
Linklater explores the structural language of an institution and space to develop a series of structural responses. Linklater considers the internal language of walls, the spaces for the Indigenous body, and how spaces of inclusion can be extended. Ubiquitous materials of construction, gypsum, plywood and steel mined and extracted from the land, are repurposed in a series of 8 foot high sculptures, their span mimicking that of Linklater’s chest and height referring to his height with extended arms. Furthermore, there is a large-scale structural intervention in the galleries, the removal and replacing of the east gallery wall introducing a sentence questioning Indigenous sovereignty of land and law, and legacy.
From Our Hands is an intervention into given structures, and given spaces are expanded, the residue will persist.
This is Linklater’s first solo institutional exhibition in Toronto and is the third in a series of commissioned solo exhibitions at Mercer Union generously supported by Partners In Art.
