“In these paintings, negative space is full of interpretive potential. Visual vacancies produce meaning and confirm that there is great substance in nothingness.”
Matthew Ryan Smith
Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD, is the Curator & Head of Collections at Glenhyrst Art Gallery in Brantford, Ontario, the Literary Editor of First American Art Magazine, and an editorial board member for the Yearbook of Moving Image Studies at Kiel University, Germany. In 2022, Matthew served as editor of Eli Baxter’s memoir Aki-wayn-zih: A Person as Worthy as the Earth, which was awarded the Governor General’s Award for English-language nonfiction.
Our Summer 2023 issue features a dynamic group of writers and culture workers who offer insight into the unique circumstances of the art world, many of which are in dire need of critique and deep reconsideration.
Using the aesthetics of indenture, Gosine seeks to re-establish connections to the land, its people, and the meaning of home.
From the Archives: This is an online republishing of the original article, first published in the Spring 2015 issue of BlackFlash Magazine (32.2).
Jeff Bierk is a Toronto-based photographer and visual artist whose documentation of his closeknit group of friends has garnered national and international media attention (and consternation).
![Jackson 2bears, Mythologies of an [Un]dead Indian, 2013, video still. Reproduction courtesy the artist and the Ryerson Image Centre.](https://i0.wp.com/blackflash.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/bf_31_1_2bears.jpg?fit=997%2C376&ssl=1)
The critical approach in recent years to categorize contemporary Indigenous art and artists is of principle concern here; there is a danger of conflating aesthetic, cultural, and individual autonomy under the banner of partisanship. It seems to me, at least, that there is an underlying danger that when too many lines are drawn in the sand, there becomes no more room left to manoeuvre.
