Peter Morin
(Tahltan-French)
Prince George BC, Dënéndeh, Dakeł Keyoh (ᑕᗸᒡ ᗲᘏᑋ), Lheidli T'enneh Territory 1977
Currently based in Tkaronto, Mississaugas of the Credit, Hodinöhsö:ni’, Anishinabewaki ᐊᓂᔑᓈᐯᐗᑭ, and Wendake-Nionwentsïo Territory
NDN Love Songs
2018
Vinyl transfer, digital video
With Navarana Igloliorte
Collection of the Artist
PART ONE
A score of instructions to musicians is presented alongside seven video portraits.
PART TWO
Recordings of previous performances are added to the video portraits.
PART THREE
Parmela Attariwala performs the score on violin.
Peter Morin is a Tahltan Nation artist and curator. Throughout his artistic practice, Morin investigates the impact zones that occur when Indigenous practices collide with Western-settler colonialism. Morin’s artworks are shaped, and reshaped, by Tahltan epistemological production and often takes the form of performance interventions. In addition to his exhibition history, Morin has curated exhibition for the Museum of Anthropology, Western Front, Bill Reid Gallery and Burnaby Art Gallery. In 2016, Morin received the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Outstanding Achievements by a Canadian Mid-Career Artist. Morin’s practice has spanned twenty years so far, with exhibitions in London, Berlin, Singapore, New Zealand, and Greenland, as well as across Canada and the United States. Morin currently holds a tenured appointment in the Faculty of Arts at the Ontario College of Art and Design University in Toronto.
Csetkwe FortIer (Syilx and Secwepmec nations)
Performing NDN Love Songs by Peter Morin, 2021
27 minutes, 38 seconds
Digital video: Jonathon Fulton
Courtesy of the Kamloops Art Gallery
PETER MORIN AND PARMELA ATTARIWALA IN CONVERSATION
25 minutes, 20 seconds
Presented by the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery as a part of Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts, exhibited at the Belkin September 8-December 6, 2020.
In Part One of NDN Love Songs, the artist offers a score of instructions to musicians presented alongside seven video portraits. Part Two presents videos of recordings of previous iterations of the Soundings exhibition at Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Gund Gallery and Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery. In Part Three, Parmela Attariwala performs the score on the violin at the Belkin. NDN Love Songs presents seven short videos that can be read as “drum portraits.” The drums featured are from the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, and each represent someone that Morin has loved in his life, and for whom he has not fully been able to express that love. Playing in succession in a line and moving at different speeds, the drum portraits can be interpreted through the written score on the adjacent wall that reads:
A decolonized body has the ability to remake love/loving/sex/sexuality
One draw across the strings is a body
One draw across the strings for the release of breath
One draw across the strings for the acknowledgement of desire
One draw across the strings is to let go
One draw across the strings to complete their name
The rest is up to you
Repeat eight times
Charlena Russell Performing NDN Love Songs by Peter Morin
22 minutes, 55 seconds
Presented by the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, 2020
Resources for Further Research
Additional information and writings about Peter Morin, compiled by the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery team.
Suggested Further Reading
Morin, Peter. “Land Collaborations.” In Museopathy Revisited: Artist Interventions in Canada and Beyond. Edited by Andrea Terry and Anne Korval. McGill-Queens University Press. 2019. (Forthcoming).
Morin, Peter and Goto, Ayumi. “Writing. First. Contacts?” In Performing Utopias in the Contemporary Americas. Edited by Kim Beauchesne, Alessandra Santos. 89-98. New York: Palgrave McMillian. 2017. DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-56873-1_5.
Morin, Peter. “This is what happens when we perform the memory of the land.” In Arts of Engagement: Taking Aesthetic Action In and Beyond the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Edited by Keavy Martin, Dylan Robinson. pp. 67-92. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. 2016.
Vancouver-based violinist/violist, composer and ethnomusicologist Parmela Attariwala performs Peter Morin’s score NDN Love Songs at Agnes Etherington Art Centre.
