Art Exhibitions, Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada

This surprising and powerful intervention by New Brunswick’s First Nations artists ruptures the colonial, political, aesthetic and social routine of the City of Fredericton, which has been designated a Cultural Capital of Canada in 2009. Referencing the original historic “cultural capital” of ekpahak, the principal meeting place of the Maliseet Nation located only a few kilometres up river from present-day Fredericton, it opens a new space for the province’s First Peoples to represent themselves on their own terms. Ekpahak was a place where council fires burned, pipes were smoked, and disagreements were settled. This multi-layered, first-of-its-kind exhibition for New Brunswick provides an opportunity to continue this tradition. Blurring the false division between art and craft, Ekpahak offers an alternative to the consecrated space of the Eurocentric museum with its sanitized, taxonomic representations of First Nations culture. Presented is a snapshot of the vibrant creative expression that derives from particular sources, social contexts, and community stories within the vernacular world of New Brunswick’s Maliseet and Mi’kmaq Reserves. Photographic documentation by Mi’kmaq artist Alan Syliboy reveals these places as liminal sites of poignant beauty where meaningful symbolism, myth and ritual thrive.Organized by the Beaverbrook Art Gallery and curated by Alan Syliboy and Terry Graff.Funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, Canadian Heritage and the City of Fredericton, (The cultural capitals of Canada Program).