From the time she can remember, Adrienne Larocque loved to sew. Growing up in Kisipatnahk (Louis Bull Band, one of the Maskwacis Four Nations located within Treaty 6 Territory), she’d spend hours at her kôhkom’s sewing machine expressing her early creativity through colourful clothing. After high school, she pursued fashion design in Vancouver, but became disillusioned with how “cutthroat” the industry is.
At the same time, she felt a strong lack of connection to her own cultural identity, which didn’t develop growing up, “Because my parents went to day schools and my grandparents went to residential schools, so that knowledge was stolen from them,” she explains.
Larocque moved back to Edmonton, worked in her community for a bit, and then enrolled in the University of Alberta’ s Native Studies program, “which helped give me the language that I was missing to kind of explain my experience. It gave me more understanding around the impacts of colonization on my family and my community, and how that reverberates through my whole experience.”
Working for Indigenous-led and non-profit organizations deepened her understanding, but art never left her mind, especially once she started as program coordinator at Ociciwan Contemporary Art Centre. She then got her master’s degree in curatorial practices at the University of Winnipeg, which she’s put to use at her first show back home — âkwaskitinkewin: an embrace, at Latitude 53.
To create the show, Larocque reached out to four Canadian artists whose work she admires — heather kiskihkoman (maskwacîs, alberta), Melody Markle (Long Point, Winneway First Nation), Michelle Sound (Wapsewsipi Swan River First Nation), and Zoe Ann Cardinal Cire (Treaty 6 territory of central Alberta) — but which has never been shown here before.
“I wanted to have pieces that were joyful, and it was kind of interesting how all the works came together,” Larocque explains. “They ended up being large, textile-based works — one’s a quilt, one’s a beaded self portrait, there’s a blanket and there’s also a buffalo robe. I was thinking a lot about the feeling of being wrapped, how warm and comforting that is. And it was important to me that I use a Cree word in the title, so I reached out to a community elder, Bruce Cutknife. From the description I sent him, I expected a word that translated roughly to wrapping, but he actually came back with a different suggestion about it being kind of like a hug, or an embrace. And it just felt like he said it perfectly.”
The exhibition is on now, but Larocque is “really looking forward to the artist talk (Feb. 20), because all four artists will actually be here, so everyone can meet them and hear about their work in person. And the closing reception (Feb. 21) will be a celebration of it all.”
Under the shadow of colonization, Larocque acknowledges the heaviness present in most, possibly all, Indigenous art. She doesn’t intend âkwaskitinkewin to ignore that history, but she also doesn’t wish to dwell on it in this particular collection.
“I think with Indigenous artists like myself, there’s a piece of our work that is about education, about the history and the role that still plays in the present. But I really wanted to lean into all the joy in our lives, because our lives are not just the history — they’re also about the perseverance and the resilience and the growth and the beauty that’s come from them. And I think you can see it in the works, because they’re so vibrant, they’re beautiful, and they’re just…very fun.”
Go seee âkwaskitinkewin: an embrace now until Feb. 21 at Latitude 53.
