Encoding Culture: The Works of Barry Ace

E N CODIN G CU LT U R E T H E WORKS O F BA R RY ACE

ENCODING CULTURE THE WORKS OF BARRY ACE P re v iews By appointment Heffel Gallery, Vancouver

2247 Granville Street Galerie Heffel, Montreal

1840 rue Sherbrooke Ouest Heffel Gallery, Toronto

13 Hazelton Avenue All works can be viewed online at Heffel.com For more information, please contact: tania@heffel.com 514-933-6615 We thank Leah Snyder, digital designer and writer, The L. Project, for contributing the following essays. Snyder writes about culture, technology and contemporary art, and is a regular contributor to the National Gallery of Canada’s Gallery magazine and other Canadian art publications.

We thank Rosalin Te Omra for contributing the essay for Mino-bimaadiziwin (The Way of Good Life)—Men and Women’s Regalia Suite.

All quotes are attributed to the artist unless otherwise noted.

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ENCODING CULTURE THE WORKS OF BARRY ACE ARTIST Biography

Barry Ace is a practicing visual artist and currently lives in Ottawa. He is a debendaagzijig (citizen) of M’Chigeeng First Nation, Odawa Mnis (Manitoulin Island), Ontario, Canada. Ace’s work embraces the impact of the digital age and how it exponentially transforms and infuses Anishinaabeg culture (and other global cultures) with new technologies and new ways of communicating. His work attempts to harness and bridge the precipice between historical and contemporary knowledge, art, and power, while maintaining a distinct Anishinaabeg aesthetic connecting generations.

Ace has exhibited extensively, most recently in: Àbadakone, National Gallery of Canada (2019: Ottawa, Ontario); mazinigwaaso / to bead something, FOFA Gallery, Concordia University (2019: Montreal, Quebec); URL: IRL, Dunlop Art Gallery (2018: Regina, Saskatchewan); Àdisòkàmagan / Nous connaître un peu nous-mêmes / We’ll all become stories, Ottawa Art Gallery (2018: Ottawa, Ontario); Native Fashion Now: North American Native Style, Peabody Essex Museum (2016 – 2017: Salem, Massachusetts); Anishinaabeg Art and Power, Royal Ontario Museum (2017: Toronto, Ontario); Every. Now. Then. Reframing Nationhood, Art Gallery of Ontario (2017: Toronto, Ontario); 2017 Canadian Biennial, National Gallery of Canada (2017: Ottawa, Ontario).

Ace’s work can be found in numerous public and private collections in Canada and abroad, most notably: National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, Ontario); Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto, Ontario); Canadian Museum of History (Gatineau, Québec); Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto, Ontario); Ottawa Art Gallery (Ottawa, Ontario); Canada Council Art Bank (Ottawa, Ontario); Global Affairs Canada (Ottawa, Ontario); North American Native Museum (Zurich, Switzerland); and Ojibwe Cultural Foundation (M’Chigeeng, Ontario).

Barry Ace 1958 –

Bandolier for Niimi’idiwin (Powwow) velvet, bronze screen, paper, coroplast, metal hardware, capacitors, resistors, light-emitting diodes, glass beads, vintage circuit boards, copper jingle cones, synthetic hair, synthetic sinew, cotton thread, polyester edging bias, red and white trade beads, digital tablet with photographs, 2019 56 × 11 3/8 × 4 3/8 in, 142.2 × 28.9 × 11.1 cm Prov enance

Collection of the Artist This gashkibidaagan or bandolier bag is a celebratory work. Its lush palette is high voltage, with shades of pink and electric blue inspired by the bright colours seen in regalia at contemporary powwows (niimi’idiwin). The materials are selected by Barry Ace with the specific intention of adding “elements of modernity” to a historic style of bag, often seen in archival photographs and museum collections covered with beaded floral motifs or intricate geometric patterns of the material culture of the Anishinaabeg of the Great Lakes Regions.

Where a wool tassel or beaded and loomed fringe would have previously been incorporated, Ace has added pink synthetic strands that simulate horsehair, to produce the effect of lightness, an “upward motion” or a “rising up.” The hair flows from crimped copper cones, typically used on women’s jingle dance dress regalia. When activated through the movement of dance, the sound produced is distinct—the tinkling of tin on tin cushioned by the soft fabric of the dancer’s dresses. The visual and acoustical result is meant to emit a healing effect to those witnessing the dance. Bandolier bags were most often worn by men but would also be seen worn by women. With the inclusion of the jingles on Bandolier for Niimi’idiwin, Ace pays homage to the women dancers.

The construction of earlier bags often included a “secret pocket.” Over time, with the material innovations of the gashkibidaaganag, from woven finger-loomed construction up until the mid-19th century to the appliqué beadwork into the early 20th century, the pocket altogether disappears, or is intentionally constructed with an opening too small for a human hand. The false pocket is simply a symbol to represent what came before. In Bandolier for Niimi’idiwin Powwow, Ace incorporates his own 21st century adaptation of a gashkibidaagan design. Where a pocket may have been, a digital tablet has been embedded. Here though, what is contained in the “pocket” is no secret. The movement of someone coming within an intimate radius of the bag activates, through an embedded motion detector, images of detailed fragments of dance regalia. The images are Ace’s own digital documentation taken during intertribal dances, the moment when everyone, including the audience, is welcomed into the circle to dance together. The tablet cycles through soft focus stop-motion visuals of swirling ribbons and the dancers’ feet lifting up from and back down to the ground.

Ace, who danced for many years on the powwow circuit in the men’s Southern Straight and Woodland styles, intentionally focuses on the lower parts of the dancer’s body. He stated: “When I dance, this is what I see, only a six foot radius around me as I focus on the beat, motion and footwork to tell a story, often of hunting or warrior exploits.” This contemporary re-imagining of a gashkibidaagan provides the viewer with Ace’s perspective as a contemporary dancer.

The embellishments that connect the simulation of the horsehair to the bag, as well as the floral motifs that whirl around the digital tablet and climb up the strap, are made of electronic components. Round and rectangular circuit boards connect the bandolier bag

to the copper jingles. For the flowers and their leaves, Ace uses electronic resistors and capacitors as well as glass beads, to reference the Woodland floral motifs that became popular on the bags after the mid-1800s when glass seed beads became more accessible with increased trade. The flowers represent medicinal plants, that when danced symbolically emit healing energy. As the function of an electronic component is to store and release energy in a circuit board as needed, for Ace, they are a profound simile for the glass bead (manidoominens), meaning “spirit energy berry” in Anishinaabemowin.

The innovations in material and design that Ace chooses to use in his creation of the bandolier are an intentional action resisting the notion of cultural stasis.

His interpretation of the gashkibidaagan situates his work in the historical line of Anishinaabe innovation in design and celebration of material culture.

Please note: This work is accompanied by a letter of authenticity and provenance signed by the artist. This work will also be included in the forthcoming exhibition The Art of Indigenous Fashion at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, August 19, 2022 – January 8, 2023. price: $28,000

Barry Ace 1958 –

Efface found shoes, vintage wooden shoe stand, vintage round circuit board, coated wire, capacitors, light-emitting diodes, resistors, vintage wooden shoe lasts, metal hardware, 2017 28 × 15 × 15 1/2 in, 71.1 × 38.1 × 39.4 cm Prov enance

Collection of the Artist L iterature

Karen Kramer, Native Fashion Now: North American Indian Style, 2015, a similar work titled Reaction reproduced page 135 Completed in 2017, Barry Ace’s Efface builds on his body of work referencing the traditional “trailduster” moccasins he encountered in an aquatint by Swiss-French artist Karl Bodmer. Two Numakiki (Mandan) warriors stand in ceremonial attire that includes moccasin footwear with fur extensions attached to the heels. The illustration was published in Travels in the Interior of North America, a book by Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied. The purpose of his expedition and the accompanying book was to document what was then being termed “The Vanishing Race” of Indigenous people on the North American continent. As with Nigig Makizinan (Otter Moccasins, 2014) and its companion piece, Fox Tail Moccasins (2016), Ace has created yet another assemblage that references the historical documentation of this Indigenous footwear. In all three, rather than adorn a pair of animal skin moccasins, he has chosen modern leather shoes. With Efface, their playful façade belies a more sober intent—to dispel the notion of cultural stasis and that Indigenous cultures were destined to become a footnote in the annals of history.

Unlike the Nigig Makizinan and Fox Tail Moccasins with their fur appendages, here Ace switches to telephone wire. Ace also uses the technique of the trailing strands for his bandolier bags such as the Trinity Suite (collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario). Rather than weighting the pieces to the ground, the wire visually propels them upwards to the Sky World and galaxies beyond, providing a futuristic element that can be seen in much of Ace’s oeuvre. His re-imaginings are what Anishinaabe cultural theorist Gerald Vizenor categorized as examples of Indigenous “Survivance,” a concept that has become associated with post-millennial Indigenous art, a strategic act that invokes creative agency to envision different worlds and possibilities.

Efface is also a material reverberation of Reaction (2005), Ace’s initial work referencing traildusters using a pair of his own shoes. Aptly named after the brand of shoe, Kenneth Cole Reaction, the title also calls to mind a reaction to the occurrences of government monitoring of our movements in cyberspace. The wires in both works symbolize the need to erase one’s digital tracks. Reaction was featured in two touring exhibitions: the Museum of Art and Design, New York City’s Changing Hands: Art Without Reservation in 2012, as well as the Peabody Essex Museum’s Native Fashion Now (NFN) in 2015. Curator Karen Kramer selected the work, as she sees Ace as being a part of a group of “New Radicals,” Indigenous “provocateurs” who “embrace the experimental and erase boundaries between art and fashion.” 1 Works such as Ace’s shoes “demonstrate remarkable craftsmanship and at the same time hurl familiar materials and forms into entirely new dimensions.” 2

The shoes used for Efface are from a vintage apparel shop purchased while Ace was attending the opening for NFN in Salem, Massachusetts. Their presentation is uncanny—propped up on an antique shoe stand as though ready for a window display, they resemble something familiar and at the same time not yet experienced. In the Great Lake floral motifs, based on medicine flowers, Ace uses electronic components as a substitute for beads. “They are an aesthetic irony” he notes, when the meaning of bead (manidoominens), a spirit energy berry, is compared with the magnitude for energy contained within the capacitors, resistors and light-emitting diodes.

The title, on one hand, connotes colonial erasure; when the meaning is flipped it may also signify the nullification of colonization, presenting an opportunity for regeneration. Ace stated “As Indigenous people, we embraced technology and have always been innovative.” Ace’s modification of these Oxford-style shoes is another stunning example of his ability to Indigenize as well as Indigitize everyday accouterments, promenading a distinctive Anishinaabe aesthetic into the 21st century and beyond.

Please note: This work is accompanied by a letter of authenticity and provenance signed by the artist. This work will also be included in the forthcoming exhibition The Art of Indigenous Fashion at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, August 19, 2022 – January 8, 2023.

1. Peabody Essex Museum, Native Fashion Now, 2015, wall panels 2. Ibid.

PRICE: $15,000

Barry Ace 1958 –

Manidoominens (Beaded) Landscape photo transfer on paper, acrylic paint, glass beads, matte medium, porcupine quills, feather, cotton thread, signed and dated 2014 29 7/8 × 22 in, 76 × 56 cm Prov enance

Collection of the Artist For the title of this work, Manidoominens Landscape, Barry Ace uses Anishinaabemowin and English. Manidoominens is the Anishinaabe word for bead. It can be translated as “spirit energy berry” or “little spirit seeds.” Beads are understood to symbolically contain within them the spark of sacred healing energy. When danced, in ceremony or powwow, energy for collective healing emanates from a dancer’s regalia. Prior to contact, the Anishinaabeg used quillwork for the purpose of geometric embellishment. By the 1800s, glass beads were introduced through continuing colonization and trade, providing women with a new technology that allowed the freedom to form the curvilinear floral work that would replace the geometric motifs. The Anishinaabeg became known for their intricate beadwork, used by the Indigenous people of the Eastern Woodlands to incorporate the flora and fauna from the landscape that surrounded them.

In this work, the landscape, which becomes abstracted through the devices Ace employs in the composition, is from a photograph by Ace while “on the powwow trail, in the West, driving between Regina and Brandon, Manitoba.” A dancer himself, in the men’s Woodland and Southern Straight style, Ace has traveled extensively across North America. He also undertook four site-specific dance performances in Paris, titled A Reparative Act, to open Robert Houle’s Paris/Ojibwa, an installation at the Canadian Cultural Centre in 2010.

Parsing out the many layers of meaning in this work, it is both a biographical reference and a historical commentary. The motif of the stroke of paint bifurcating the white space, bleeding onto the image, is one Ace uses often. “The line is referencing the poignancy of the sharpness of a point that I want to make,” he states. Here, the line cuts into the ominous gray sky of storm clouds converging on the Prairies. It then slashes through the white box cars of a train that Ace notes “ironically looks like a strand of beads referencing the spirit berry but also referencing the seduction of Indigenous people with trade items in perceived exchange for territory.” For Ace, the train also calls to mind Wampum Belts, the beaded leather strands used to signify tribal alliances and treaty agreements to share the land.

The quillwork, jutting out from the blue stroke, “is a double entendre.” More than an embellishment drawing on an Anishinaabe aesthetic, it suggests a tool used to ”sign a document or make one’s mark,” as quill pens would have been used to sign the early Treaty documents “not necessarily in our favour,” Ace adds. “We had a different idea of the land. It is to be shared, not sold.” The crackled paint that begins at the top boundary of the image drips down from below a row of glass seed beads alluding to the “shrouding of that history.” The paint continues, migrating out beyond the bottom boundary onto the empty white space of the archival paper.

For Ace, this reflective piece is also about presence and absence. “The train is in the landscape where before there would have been the buffalo. Here it is a barren landscape but with a mechanical device, the train, moving through it.” The cars, carrying consumer goods from one point to another, move beyond consequence.

In Manidoominens (Beaded) Landscape, there is a foreshadowing of an “impending storm of consumerism, resource extraction, global warming.”

The landscape’s edges are contained within colour blocks reminiscent of SMPTE colour bars, used in both electronic and digital devices to properly calibrate the chroma and luminance of the screens, our modern means of communication, that deliver to us the news of what lies ahead. With their incorporation, Ace brackets the historical statement within allusions to the contemporary. He notes, “We are still here in the present looking at this history in an attempt to come to terms with what has happened.”

Work from this same series are in the collection of the Indigenous Art Centre, Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC). price: $8,500

Barry Ace 1958 –

Fox Tail Moccasins found shoes, Arctic fox tails and fur, capacitors, light-emitting diodes, resistors, glass beads, porcupine quills, rooster feathers, dyed split feathers, tin cones, white heart trade beads, plastic pony beads, satin edge bias, mother-of-pearl buttons, synthetic porcupine hair, cotton thread, rope, metal, wooden shoe lasts, 2016 5 1/2 × 7 1/2 × 43 in, 14 × 19.1 × 109.2 cm Prov enance

Collection of the Artist In 2013 Barry Ace was invited to the North American Native Museum (NONAM) in Zurich, Switzerland, to participate in a welcoming ceremony programmed around their acquisitions of his work. While there, Ace had the opportunity to spend time with the Karl Bodmer collection. Along with names like George Catlin and Edward Curtis, Bodmer (1809–1893), a Swiss-French artist, has become associated with the documentation of Indigenous people at a particular moment in North America when there was a drive to visually preserve what was seen as “The Vanishing Race.”

As viewed from a 21st century critical lens, Bodmer’s paintings, prints and aquatints, produced for European audiences, can now be understood as historically problematic with their feverish agenda of “salvage anthropology,” documenting cultures thought to be heading towards extinction. Yet, Ace underscores that despite the erroneous origins, because of Bodmer’s incredible attention to detail, his work holds current value as meticulous visual documents on Indigenous material culture from that time.

His encounter with one particular illustration—Bodmer’s depiction of Mandan warriors in trail-duster moccasins, “sparked a renewal” for Ace, as he stated. This aquatint was published in the book Travels in the Interior of North America by German Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied. Upon completion of an expedition to Brazil, where as an artist, ethnologist and naturalist he documented flora and fauna as well as the Aimoré people, the Prince organized a second expedition to the United States.

For this journey, he hired an assistant—Bodmer, who would be specifically designated to the task of visual documentation. Bodmer proved to be a perceptive and sensitive recorder for their trip up the Missouri River.

In Bodmer’s image, the two Numakiki (Mandan) warriors, Sih-Chida and Mahchsi-Karehde, are in ceremonial attire. Ribbon-like shapes snake out from their moccasins. The practical application for such an appendage would be to erase one’s

trail along a dusty path. Ace notes that in this image their purpose is not for battle but ceremonial, delighting the eye with their colour and patterning.

Upon returning to Canada from Switzerland, Ace produced Nigig Makizinan (Otter Moccasins) in 2014 and Fox Tail Moccasins in 2016. The first pair of “traildusters” were acquired by the National Gallery of Canada (NGC). In 2019 they were featured in Àbadakone | Continuous Fire | Feu continuel, the NGC’s second edition of their International Indigenous Art survey that began with Sakahàn in 2013. For Nigig Makizinan, Ace used Fluevog shoes gifted to him. For Fox Tail Moccasins, the companion work to Nigig Makizinan, Ace utilized his own shoes. These black leather shoes, with fox fur and feathers trailing behind them, are embellished with mother of pearl buttons, trade beads, porcupine quills, feathers, tin cones and pipe bone traditionally used in the breast plates of men’s regalia. They also showcase Ace’s signature referencing of traditional Anishinaabe beadwork, the striking and colourful motifs of the Woodland style representing healing medicinal plants. As has become Ace’s trademark, the flowers, leaves and stems are made with glass beads and electronic components—resistors, capacitors and diodes. The components, with their capacity to transmit electrical energy, are a simile for beads or manidoominens in Anishinaabemowin. The word translates as “spirit energy berries,” as glass seed beads were understood to hold within them the capacity to emit spiritual and healing energy.

For Ace, he claims his work is not about “reproducing an object as a replica but rather using the work as a reference or sounding board.” As with much of Ace’s oeuvre, there is a reverent citation of the historical that he builds on to create a contemporary iteration. When viewing Bodmer’s work, as captured by his colonial gaze, “we are looking at a historical stasis,” Ace asserts. Ace’s own work, with its innovative and beautiful use of repurposed electronic components, breaks the colonial confinement to set Indigenous culture into the present.

The companion work Nigig Makizinan (Otter Moccasins) is in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada.

Please note: This work is accompanied by a letter of authenticity and provenance signed by the artist. This work will also be included in the forthcoming exhibition The Art of Indigenous Fashion at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, August 19, 2022 – January 8, 2023. As well, it was part of the exhibition Early Days, that took place at theMcMichael Canadian Art Collection in 2020 to 2021, which will go on to tour to three venues in the United States in late 2023 to 2024.

PRICE: $18,000

Barry Ace 1958 –

Mino-bimaadiziwin (The Way of Good Life)—Men and Women’s Regalia Suite mixed media, 2017 Prov enance

Collection of the Artist L iterature

Lori Beavis, mazinigwaaso / to bead something, Faculty of Fine Arts Gallery, Concordia University, 2019 Robert Houle’s Paris / Ojibwa, The Art Gallery of Peterborough, 2011 Julie Nagam, Insurgence / Resurgence, Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2017, reproduced pages 23, 24 and 25 Barry Ace, A Reparative Act (Paris, France), https://www.barryacearts.com/beadwork/ mino-bimaadiziwin/, and https://www.barryacearts.com/performance/ a-reparative-act-paris-france/, accessed January 17, 2020 Lori Beavis, Ace’s Exhibition Mazinigwasso at FOFA, Concordia University, http://www.barryacearts.com/news/aces-solo-exhibition-mazinigwassoat-fofa-concordia-university-montreal/, accessed January 17, 2020 Homage to Four in Paris, Shelley Niro, https://www.barryacearts.com/news-2018/ ottawa-art-gallery-special-commission-shelley-niros-homage-to-four-in-parisfootage-of-barry-ace-site-specific-performance/https://oaggao.ca/access/, accessed January 17, 2020 Barry Ace’s broad range of materials used in works such as this incorporate the traditional and organic, such as abalone and horse hide, to contemporary and technological, such as light-emitting diodes and computer parts. The regalia are stunning in their effect— multi-layered, colourful, rich in decorative detail and innovative in their use of materials.

This references past practices of the Anishinaabe, who incorporated new materials brought

by European settlers into their decoration of articles of clothing and objects such as bags. As Ace states, “My contemporary artistic practice examines and draws inspiration from multiple facets of Anishinaabe culture. I create objects and imagery that utilize many distinct cultural forms and motifs, and I intentionally disrupt the reading of these works through the introduction of other elements, endeavouring to create a convergence of the historical and the contemporary.”

Dance is an important expression of Anishinaabe culture, and Ace used the men’s regalia in this work in dance performances in Paris in 2010, documented by Shelley Niro in the film Homage to Four in Paris. These performances, entitled A Reparative Act honoured the historic Anishinaabe dance troupe led by Maungwaudaus, who traveled to Paris in 1843 and performed in George Catlin’s Indian Curiousities for five months. Ace, dressed in the men’s regalia in this work, did four site-specific performances honouring four of the dancers from Maungwaudaus’s troupe, at four locations in Paris—the Louvre, Jardin des Tuileries, Place de la Concorde and L’esplanade des Invalides. Ace’s performance celebrated, as he noted, “A miniscule moment in history deeply shrouded under a veil of mysticism, exoticism and romance, monumental in its celebration of a distant foreign space and time.”

The troupe also traveled through Belgium, England, Scotland and Ireland, and on his return to North America in 1848, Maungwudaus wrote An Account of the Chippewa Indians, Who Have Been Travelling Among the Whites in the United States, England, Ireland, Scotland, France and Belgium, documenting the troupe’s experiences in Europe.

As Lori Beavis notes, Ace’s work contributes to “the discussions taking place within Canada and other settler nations on the topics of decolonization and re/conciliation.” Works and performances such as this are important, to share stories and educate people.

In 2012, Ace won the Ontario Association of Art Galleries Curatorial Writing Award for his essay A Reparative Act written for the Paris/Ojibwa catalogue.

This work is accompanied by the following publication: Robert Houle’s Paris / Ojibwa, Art Gallery of Peterborough, 2011 (essay by Barry Ace: A Reparative Act, page 34, autographed by Barry Ace).

Please note: This work is accompanied by a letter of authenticity and provenance signed by the artist. This work will also be included in the forthcoming traveling exhibition Radical Stitch at the Mackenzie Art Gallery, Regina, April 30 – September 25, 2022.

The complete medium consists of: Men’s Regalia: Velvet fabric, glass beads, raw canvas, cotton thread, satin, brass buttons, calico fabric, hawk bells, rhinestones, plastic, polyester, horse hide, copper wire, otter fur, synthetic hair, synthetic bias edging, (wood: antique war club), bronze screen, paper, rhinestones, plastic, capacitors, inductors, light-emitting diodes, resistors, circuit boards, coated wire, copper cones, white heart beads, abalone buttons, mannequin.

Women’s Regalia: Velvet fabric, glass beads, cotton thread, calico fabric, polyester, hide, turkey feathers, string, ostrich plume, copper wire, otter fur, synthetic hair, bronze screen, paper, cowrie shells, rhinestones, synthetic bias edging, plastic, capacitors, inductors, light-emitting diodes, resistors, circuit boards, coated wire, copper cone jingles, copper cones, white heart beads, abalone buttons, mannequin. price: $129,000

Barry Ace 1958 –

Memory Landscape II digital print on archival canvas, glass beads, thread, metal hardware, wood, deer hide, on verso signed, titled, dated 2018 and inscribed #5-30 12 7/8 × 31 7/8 in, 33 × 81 cm Prov enance

Collection of the Artist L iterature

Memory Landscape II scrolls 1-4, in the Government of Ontario Art Collection, http://ao.minisisinc.com/scripts/mwimain.dll/144/GOAC?DIRECTSEARCH Memory Landscape II is part of a series that responds to Memory Landscape I, a set of honouring scrolls that Barry Ace completed in 2014 as a tribute to a loved one who had recently passed. The recent death of his friend, who Ace describes as close as kin, an “adopted brother,” prompted Ace to go into his own archive of slide transparencies. The images were taken in the 1980s during their travels together through their home territory of Manitoulin Island and the surrounding Algoma region of Northern Ontario. The compositions for each scroll include the digital scans Ace made of the transparencies to form photographic diptychs, with his beadwork forming the intermediary between each image.

Traditionally, the Anishinaabeg used birch bark as a material to record information, including migration stories, songs, ceremony and mythology. In Memory Landscape I and II, Ace’s diptychs and beaded motifs on birch bark form a tableaux, drawing its inspiration from birch bark sheets that are stitched together to form sacred scrolls with incised information important to the Midewiwin, the Grand Medicine Society of the Anishinaabe. Using the facsimile of birch bark, which he has created by digitally scanning bark that is then

printed onto archival canvas, he innovates with a modern material to commemorate the time these two friends spent together on the land. As with much of Ace’s oeuvre, he uses contemporary materials to situate the work in a current context, while still ensuring cultural continuity with the past. Lashed with deer hide strips onto either end are wooden sticks Ace sourced where he now resides in Ottawa, Ontario. The scrolls can stand alone or be further extended by lashing them together to form a longer work.

In Memory Landscape I, a very personal work for Ace that was first exhibited in Braga, Portugal at Museu Nogueira da Silva, 30 scrolls form a complete narrative documenting the seasons of life, and will remain together as an unbroken set. In Memory Landscape II, each of the 30 diptychs from this set stand alone, as Ace continues with images depicting the Manitoulin area, the traditional territory of the Anishinaabeg. Through these lush images, Ace invites us to see this stunning landscape through an Anishinaabe lens.

Two locations are depicted in this work that hold personal meaning to Ace. On the left is Dreamer’s Rock, located on Birch Island in Whitefish River First Nation reserve. The top of the white quartz rock is a sacred place, where one would go for a vision quest upon reaching puberty. From this high elevation, a 360 degree view of the land is possible. To the right is an image of Bridal Veil Falls. The Falls flow from Lake Kagawong, the source of the Kagawong River that moves onwards to the North Channel of Lake Huron, one of the five Great Lakes, all of which are important to the Anishinaabeg. Between the rock and the water is the beaded outline of an otter, Ace’s dodem, or clan. The otter, nigig in Anishinaabemowin, is a sub-clan of the Marten, the Warrior clan. The otter, poised as though on the edge of gliding into the Falls’ pool, halts, its gaze meeting our own.

Memory Landscape II is a suite comprised of 30 works, and this is #5.

Please note: this work is unframed.

This work is accompanied by a letter of authenticity and provenance signed by the artist.

PRICE: $2,400

Barry Ace 1958 –

Memory Landscape II digital print on archival canvas, glass beads, thread, metal hardware, wood, deer hide, on verso signed, titled, dated 2018 and inscribed #6-30 12 7/8 × 31 7/8 in, 33 × 81 cm Prov enance

Collection of the Artist L iterature

Memory Landscape II scrolls 1-4, in the Government of Ontario Art Collection, http://ao.minisisinc.com/scripts/mwimain.dll/144/GOAC?DIRECTSEARCH Memory Landscape II is part of a series that responds to Memory Landscape I, a set of honouring scrolls that Barry Ace completed in 2014 as a tribute to a loved one who had recently passed. The recent death of his friend, who Ace describes as close as kin, an “adopted brother,” prompted Ace to go into his own archive of slide transparencies. The images were taken in the 1980s during their travels together through their home territory of Manitoulin Island and the surrounding Algoma region of Northern Ontario. The compositions for each scroll include the digital scans Ace made of the transparencies to form photographic diptychs, with his beadwork forming the intermediary between each image.

Traditionally, the Anishinaabeg used birch bark as a material to record information, including migration stories, songs, ceremony and mythology. In Memory Landscape I and II, Ace’s diptychs and beaded motifs on birch bark form a tableaux, drawing its inspiration from birch bark sheets that are stitched together to form sacred scrolls with incised information important to the Midewiwin, the Grand Medicine Society of the Anishinaabe. Using the facsimile of birch bark, which he has created by digitally scanning bark that is then

printed onto archival canvas, he innovates with a modern material to commemorate the time these two friends spent together on the land. As with much of Ace’s oeuvre, he uses contemporary materials to situate the work in a current context, while still ensuring cultural continuity with the past. Lashed with deer hide strips onto either end are wooden sticks Ace sourced where he now resides in Ottawa, Ontario. The scrolls can stand alone or be further extended by lashing them together to form a longer work.

In Memory Landscape I, a very personal work for Ace that was first exhibited in Braga, Portugal at Museu Nogueira da Silva, 30 scrolls form a complete narrative documenting the seasons of life, and will remain together as an unbroken set. In Memory Landscape II, each of the 30 diptychs from this set stand alone, as Ace continues with images depicting the Manitoulin area, the traditional territory of the Anishinaabeg. Through these lush images, Ace invites us to see this stunning landscape through an Anishinaabe lens.

In the centre of this work is the Thunderbird, a manitou or spirit, important in the Anishinaabe worldview. The sky world and heavens, Animkiig in Anishinaabemowin, are the domain of the Thunderbirds, invisible forces that represent protection for the Anishinaabeg. They are also a symbol for M’Chigeeng on the Island of Manitoulin, the First Nation where Ace is from. Hovering between the winter and spring scenes, Ace has chosen to depict the Thunderbird as white, as during the coldest season the Thunderbird is dormant, re-awakening once warmth returns to the earth. The spring storms, with their thunder and lightning, symbolize the return of the Animkiig. The winter scene was taken at Whitefish River First Nation, near Manitoulin Island, and on the right is an image taken at Gull Lake, Temagami, Ontario.

Memory Landscape II is a suite comprised of 30 works, and this is #6.

Please note: this work is unframed.

This work is accompanied by a letter of authenticity and provenance signed by the artist. price: $2,400

Barry Ace 1958 –

Memory Landscape II digital print on archival canvas, glass beads, thread, metal hardware, wood, deer hide, on verso signed, titled, dated 2018 and inscribed #7-30 12 7/8 × 31 7/8 in, 33 × 81 cm Prov enance

Collection of the Artist L iterature

Memory Landscape II scrolls 1–4, in the Government of Ontario Art Collection, http://ao.minisisinc.com/scripts/mwimain.dll/144/GOAC?DIRECTSEARCH Memory Landscape II is part of a series that responds to Memory Landscape I, a set of honouring scrolls that Barry Ace completed in 2014 as a tribute to a loved one who had recently passed. The recent death of his friend, who Ace describes as close as kin, an “adopted brother,” prompted Ace to go into his own archive of slide transparencies. The images were taken in the 1980s during their travels together through their home territory of Manitoulin Island and the surrounding Algoma region of Northern Ontario. The compositions for each scroll include the digital scans Ace made of the transparencies to form photographic diptychs, with his beadwork forming the intermediary between each image.

Traditionally, the Anishinaabeg used birch bark as a material to record information, including migration stories, songs, ceremony and mythology. In Memory Landscape I and II, Ace’s diptychs and beaded motifs on birch bark form a tableaux, drawing its inspiration from birch bark sheets that are stitched together to form sacred scrolls with incised information important to the Midewiwin, the Grand Medicine Society of the Anishinaabe. Using

the facsimile of birch bark, which he has created by digitally scanning bark that is then printed onto archival canvas, he innovates with a modern material to commemorate the time these two friends spent together on the land. As with much of Ace’s oeuvre, he uses contemporary materials to situate the work in a current context, while still ensuring cultural continuity with the past. Lashed with deer hide strips onto either end are wooden sticks Ace sourced where he now resides in Ottawa, Ontario. The scrolls can stand alone or be further extended by lashing them together to form a longer work.

In Memory Landscape I, a very personal work for Ace that was first exhibited in Braga, Portugal at Museu Nogueira da Silva, 30 scrolls form a complete narrative documenting the seasons of life, and will remain together as an unbroken set. In Memory Landscape II, each of the 30 diptychs from this set stand alone, as Ace continues with images depicting the Manitoulin area, the traditional territory of the Anishinaabeg. Through these lush images, Ace invites us to see this stunning landscape through an Anishinaabe lens.

In this work, the Sky World, important to the Anishinaabeg, is present in all of its stunning colour at dusk. The images were taken on the Spanish River near Gogama in Northern Ontario in the 1980s. The beaded floral motif in the centre also alludes to the Sky World in the way it is positioned. The lower flower is the watery underworld, the leaves the middle world of earth, while the top flower points to the heavens and the Sky World beyond. The colours echo the palette created by the setting sun. Their style references the Anishinaabe Woodland beadwork of the Great Lake Regions, and symbolizes the medicinal power of plants.

Memory Landscape II is a suite comprised of 30 works, and this is #7.

Please note: this work is unframed.

This work is accompanied by a letter of authenticity and provenance signed by the artist.

PRICE: $2,400

Barry Ace 1958 –

Flux vintage paper water flow chart, synthetic circular packing material, glass beads, thread, porcupine threads on paper, signed and dated, 2017 41 3/8 × 29 1/2 in, 105.1 × 74.9 cm Prov enance

Collection of the Artist Flux forms part of a series in which Barry Ace addresses climate change and its impact on water. In Sacred Water 1 and Sacred Water 2 (2016), in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada, Ace used circular graphs drawn by machines that measure water flow to form the basis of two compositions—one that symbolizes a world in balance, the other a world out of balance. In Sacred Water 1 the outline of the measurements resembles the petals of a flower which Ace has accentuated with beadwork. In Anishinaabe material culture, floral motifs are commonly used to represent medicinal healing plants. In Sacred Water 2, the outline is broken and without form. Ace has again beaded the measurements, and this time they are small curved lines that fail to connect.

In Flux, the third work in the series, Ace concentrates the beadwork within the centre of the circular graph. Here, inside the watery blue outer circle of beadwork, the same blue beads trickle into an inner black disk resembling a circuit board. The meandering estuaries mimic the metallic pathways traced onto the surfaces of a board. It is through these pathways often made of copper—an element of spiritual importance to the Anishinaabe—that energy currents flow, making the connections required to power our 21st century devices.

The effect calls to mind a landscape, as witnessed from above, yet it is also an intentional insertion of a common motif by Ace referencing, as well as incorporating, the refuse and e-waste of our digital age.

In Anishinaabemowin beads are called manidoominens, meaning “little spirit berries,” as beads were understood to be the conductors of healing energy. When animated, for example by the motion of a dancer in their regalia, the energy is then transferred. The dancer enables the modification from a diseased state of being to one of health. As with materials with electrical conductivity—copper and other metals, water molecules as well as our cells— when there is an obstruction in the flow, the interruption can create imbalance, even illness.

Ace comments that much of his work deals “with the notion of systems.” When there is ease of flow and connectivity a system can function fully, in a state of well-being. The verb flux implies movement or flow as well as a change of state, as with water’s ability to transform to vapour or melt from a solid state of ice. “The earth’s water is always in movement,” Ace

observes, however with water’s current state of flux—extreme weather, flooding, and pollution—for that, he adds “we are responsible.”

In all three of the works a long strand of beads stretches down from the top of the archival paper to intersect the circle. Another motif of Ace’s is to use either a line of paint or hand stitched beadwork to represent “the sharp and poignant point” he wishes to make. This work, for Ace, represents the “story of water” and the critical role it plays for the earth as well for our own biological systems. Flux is a call for a restoration of balance as well as a signal to course correct the flow.

Works from this same series are in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada. price: $15,000

Barry Ace 1958 –

Synthesis birch bark, wood, laser cut paper, photo transfer, capacitors, resistors, light-emitting diodes, glass beads, trade beads, coated wire, signed and dated 2018 13 × 9 in, 33 × 22.9 cm Prov enance

Collection of the Artist In this work, Barry Ace explores the meaning of synthesis, “a composition or combination of parts or elements so as to form a whole.” 1 Ace intentionally combines three types of record-keeping to form a unique configuration.

Birch bark and paper, along with electrical components that signify the electronic or digital storing of data, are layered one on top of each other, as though indicating the historical timeline of their introduction into use.

The Anishinaabeg, like many cultures, used birch bark to record sacred, medicinal or historical information. The scroll-like format is rolled onto a wood stick, referencing traditional Anishinaabe wiigwaasabak (scrolls). The paper, with its laser cut embellishment, is Italian, acquired while Ace was in Paris in 2010 to perform A Reparative Act for the opening of Robert Houle’s exhibition Paris / Ojibwa at the Canadian Cultural Centre. The image, a portrait of an Indigenous man, is a reproduction of a cabinet card, a style of photographic reproduction that was popular in use from the mid- to late 1800s that replaced the carte de visite, an earlier French invention. The name refers to the size of the reproductions, which were designed to be large enough to be easily viewed when displayed on a cabinet.

Diagonally bisecting the image, Ace has added what has become his signature embellishment—the use of electronic components to reference traditional Woodland-style beadwork of the Great Lakes Region. The “bead-like” ornamentation consists of brown flat disc capacitors for leaves, with sparkling glass seed beads strung between the blue and green resistors in the stem and larger leaves. Dipped capacitors, with their multi-coloured stripes, form the petals of the flower. A light-emitting diode emerges from its centre. With their intended function to transmit electrical energy, the components are a simile for beads referred to as manidoominens or “spirit energy berries” in Anishinaabemowin, as they symbolically hold within them the charge of healing spiritual energy. Beads were also often used as a type of mnemonic record-keeping, as with the quahog shells used for Wampum Belts. Below the image “white heart” beads (red) and antique African trade beads (stripes of green) hang as a tassel. As with many colonized areas, beads manufactured in Italy,

France and other parts of Europe became a form of currency. Ace notes that the trade beads, like paper and other materials that came into circulation along with colonization, “speak to the economic seduction of Indigenous people.”

The three materials—bark, paper and components—raise questions around longevity as well as sustainability. The digital and electronic devices that record our data are designed with intentionally planned obsolescence and do not easily decay. Ace sources the electrical components from surplus stores. He recycles them into his work as a way to repurpose the refuse of e-waste, taking them out of circulation and landfills. Susceptible to moisture and more ephemeral, paper comes with its own environmental cost, yet its decomposition rate is preferable when considered against the electrical components with their heavy metal toxicity. Birch bark can sustain damage from water, but artifacts made from it can last thousands of years, yet its environmental burden is light. The work begs the question, when considering what we use to keep memory alive, “Which material is the most primitive one?”

Please note: this work is unframed.

1. Merriam Website Dictionary, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/synthesis PRICE: $2,500

Barry Ace 1958 –

Waawaashkesh Dodem (Deer Clan) Automata Bandolier glass beads, capacitors, light-emitting diodes, resistors, vintage circuit boards on handmade paper, on verso signed, titled and dated 2020 37 3/4 × 12 1/4 in, 96 × 31 cm Prov enance

Collection of the Artist As with Barry Ace’s Transformation Bandolier, paper is used for the form of the “deconstructed” bandolier bag in this 2020 work, Waawaaskesh Dodem (Deer Clan) Automata Bandolier. A profound piece, this may be one of Ace’s deepest dives into the consideration of Anishinaabe cosmology and the shape it takes in the contemporary world.

Here again he uses electronic resistors, capacitors and diodes to convey a 21st century reworking of the Woodland-style floral motifs popular on the gashkibidaagan (bandolier bag) from the mid-1800s onward. The component becomes a substitute for the bead, a word that when translated from the Anishinaabemowin, manidoominens, means spirit energy berry, holding within the capacity for healing energy. For Ace, they “share an uncanny simile with electronic components that also store and release energy to perform their function.”

The components, with their intrinsic power, lie latent until they are connected on a circuit board. A schema design maps out the pathways between. A conductive material, like copper, transmits the energy along the path from one to another. Once connected, the components perform as an automaton—a device set into motion by a defined set of protocols that allow it to function with its correct intent. Any obstruction or break in the connectivity halts the course of energy, resulting in a system malfunction.

A simple example of an automaton would be an antique mechanical toy that performs a dance when a crank is turned; more complex examples would be digital data processors like a vending or bank machine. Ace draws a connection between the objective of an automaton to that of mythology. Following a “predetermined set of instructions” results in the correct programmed output. With regards to myth and legend, the objective is to provide a set of prescribed rules that guide a culture on the correct course to achieve a desired outcome.

These directives for human conduct also pertain to established protocols when dealing with mythological and spiritual entities. An example is the mishibizhiw, the underwater panther whose domain, in Anishinaabe mythology, is below the surface of the water where it “programs” the movement of currents and waves. Ace states, “By not following the coded protocols of respect of the water, as recounted in the stories, a predetermined adverse response will be triggered by the mishibizhiw”. The cultural stories also provide instructions on how to course correct when a system, spiritual or biological, is severed and dysfunction occurs.

The Automata paperwork series illustrates the interrelatedness between mythology and the concept of the automaton by revealing “abstracted animal forms” in the “schematics printed on vintage circuit-boards,” as Ace describes. Here, inside the white square of the board on the pocket panel, Ace perceives the form of a deer (waawaaskesh), one of the 7 main clans (dodem) of the Anishinaabeg, in the outline of the copper tracking. The copper, an element that holds sacred power for the Anishinaabeg, transforms the abstracted form into a conduit for energy, providing the power to animate it to perform its prescribed function. Ace creates work for his community, first and foremost, embedding signifiers that, without explanation, may not be discernible to those outside it. For Ace, “the hardware that drives the electronic age, as in complex circuit-board schematics, are ladened with abstracted pictographic imagery that present a unique opportunity to rework these ephemera sourced images into culturally specific code.”

Ace articulates his combination of myth and electronics through the creation of a new portemanteau—the mythotronic. Continuing the motif of historical and contemporary convergence, Ace’s (re)presentations of Anishinaabe cosmology “demonstrate evidence of the presence of automata-like Anishinaabe symbology encoded into our digital age.”

Please note: This work is accompanied by a letter of authenticity and provenance signed by the artist. This work will also be included in the forthcoming exhibition The Art of Indigenous Fashion at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, August 19, 2022 – January 8, 2023. price: $13,000

Barry Ace 1958 –

Transformation Bandolier Somerset paper, capacitors, resistors, light-emitting diodes, glass beads, thread, digital tablet with images 28 1/2 × 11 1/2 in, 72.4 × 29.2 cm Prov enance

Collection of the Artist The bandolier bag, or gashkibidaagan, factors prominently in the material culture of the Anishinaabeg, along with other First Nations of the Great Lakes Regions into the Prairies. Many stunning examples exist in museum collections, pointing to the diversity in their design and ornamentation. From the early Odawa or Ojibwe quillwork with their geometric patterns to the abstracted floral designs of the Lenape (Delaware), they delight the eyes.

The bags were not meant to merely serve a practical purpose, they were created to be gifted “as a significant display of gratitude and respect to friends, family, other tribes and government officials,” as well as to “signify respect for another individual’s accomplishments or contributions,” as Marcia Anderson notes.1 The exact root of this iconic form is not known. Many earlier precursors exist, even pre-contact, but the iteration that is seen by the mid-1800s, particularly within the Ojibwe of Minnesota, is what became known as the gashkibidaagan, also at times referred to as aazhooningwa’an, “a word that means to “wear across the shoulder.” 2 The etymology of gashkibidaagan “comes from gashk-, meaning “enclosed, attached together,” and -bid, ‘tie it.’ ” 3 The structure of the bag consists of a strap (often made to be detachable), the front and back panel of the rectangular pocket area and the bottom fringe. Whether the bag is loom-woven, as with earlier bags, or with the spot-stitch appliqué that appears late 1800s into the early 20th century, the structure stays consistent.

With Transformation Bandolier, Barry Ace deconstructs the bag down to its essential form. We see all the conventional elements of its structure: strap, pocket panel and fringe.

For the work, paper is his material of choice, as though he is patterning a template for the future. For Ace, the decision was deliberate, a way to provoke questions as to why, when fabric would be the obvious option, he would opt to use such a delicate material? The fragility is a meditation on loss, of how things can be easily damaged or destroyed when one’s attention is lacking. When stitching, paper presents a formidable challenge as it can be easily marked. Ace stated, “You have to be very definitive when you poke a hole into the paper.

You can’t go back very easily to make a change.”

The floral motifs Ace has sewn onto the strap and the edges of the pocket panel reference the Woodland-style beadwork seen on the bandolier bags that gained in popularity once European glass seed beads become more available through trade. At this time, the geometric imagery produced through beading hand-looms, referencing the earlier Anishinaabe quillwork, now flowed with twists and turns. By the late 19th century, due to the increased accessibility of beads, the visual imagery on the appliqué mimics the meandering of the vegetation seen in the Eastern Woodlands.

The word for bead in Anishinaabemowin is manidoominens, meaning “spirit energy berry” or “little spirit berry,” as beads were considered to contain within them a spiritual energy or healing power that could be activated. Ace has incorporated components—resistors, capacitors, and diodes—that contain within them the ability to transmit energy, a simile for the bead. They form leaves and flowers with lines of glass beads connecting the components. This work is also a deep contemplation of the importance of the bead within Anishinaabe culture. Along with the components and actual beadwork, including the vibrant red and yellow flowers along the top of the pocket area, Ace has embedded a digital table, a device that requires similar types of components for its power. Here, the programmed image loop contains abstracted beadwork digitally collaged from sourced image files of traditional beadwork. Ace isolates a motif, then flips it, reconnecting it to its origin, producing a kaleidoscope effect of infinite regeneration. He observes that the bead itself now becomes a simile for the digital pixel, the one small element that connects with other small elements to form a meaningful whole. “The piece folds into itself in profound ways,” Ace explains.

For Ace, his reflection on the value of the bead to the Anishinaabeg was to provoke yet another question with the work, and he asked “Is it possible to maintain a distinct Anishinaabe aesthetic, without the use of beads?” His query may seem cursory, yet when considered against the historical backdrop of loss of Indigenous cultures, it becomes poignant as well as prescient.

Please note: This work is accompanied by a letter of authenticity and provenance signed by the artist.

1. Marcia G. Anderson, A Bag Worth A Pony: The Art of the Ojibwe Bandolier Bag, Minnesota Historical Society, 2017, page 13.

2. Ibid., 23.

3. Ibid., 12.

PRICE: $12,000

Barry Ace 1958 –

Flight of the Mgizwak (Eagles) Automata vintage circuit-board, beads, porcupine quills, acetate computer keyboard template on paper 40 x 26 1/2 in, 101.6 x 67.3 cm Prov enance

Collection of the Artist The Mgizwak are sacred animals for the Anishinaabeg, the most powerful of birds of flight. Their feathers are used for ceremonial items such as fans, staffs and headdresses, as well as presented as honorary gifts or offerings, as they are imbued with spiritual meaning and strong healing medicine. Due to their potency, protocols are put into place. Eagles also represent the channel between humans and the Great Spirit (Gchi Manidoo), carrying prayers to the sky world.

In Flight of the Mgizwak (Eagles) Automata, the wings of these majestic birds are suggested by the porcupine quills the artist has sewn onto the paper. Gesturing upwards, they are simultaneously in motion yet anchored, visually tethered to columns constructed of beaded blocks of copper, silver and gold, the conductive elements for electrical current. The columns echo the apparent vertical motion of the stacked electronic resistors on the white circuit board, where two gold plates, resembling the outstretched wings of an eagle, are etched. Together, the quill and beadwork also reference the architecture of hydroelectric poles. In Anishinaabemowin, the word for bead is manidoominens meaning “spirit berries,” that transmit power and healing. Ace’s inclusion of the beadwork is a subtle simile for the flow of electrons as well as spiritual energy.

Below the symmetrically placed columns is an acetate computer keyboard template, its edge variable and undulating. Space has been left between where the columns end and the circuity lines begin, an interstitial gap that interrupts the connection between them. On the template, gold circles indicate the placement for numerical, alphabetical and directional keys—the top row, the probable location of the F-keys, the preset functions that perform the operating system (OS) commands.

Whereas the rising wings symbolize communication with a mythological or higher power, the poles and keyboard denote electronic or digital communication.

The work is part of Ace’s ongoing Automata series which looks at the parallels between communication technology (electronic and digital) and mythology, or as Ace has termed it, the “mythotronic.” With both, the transmission of information must follow a prescribed set of coded rules or protocols in order to produce the desired, and predicted, output or outcome. If an eagle feather falls to the ground during a ceremony or dance, a retrieval ritual is required to lift it up. By performing the correct cultural protocol, the desired result, spiritual balance, is achieved.

These themes of communication and balance are ones Ace often addresses in his work. He considers systems and how the breaks within them, be it the fracturing of the spiritual cohesion of a culture or a disconnection between electrical components, create dysfunction. The abrupt event of colonization—the impact of denominational and state-run residential schools, loss of language and traditional knowledge—is such a fracture. Although elements in Ace’s work are often “metaphors for cultural loss and assimilation,” he suggests that a break “doesn’t preclude that a system cannot be repaired.” Whether utilizing an F-key to initiate an OS function or performing a ritual to convey a message to the spirit realm, if a connection is made, then balance is maintained.

As in Waawaaskesh Dodem (Deer Clan) Automata, Ace includes a vintage circuit board for what it contains, a pictographic image of a deer. While sourcing the electronic ephemera, Ace noticed “abstracted animal forms” embedded in the board’s schematic, here the outstretched gold wings of the eagle and the two trailing rows of vertically spaced resistors, alluding to its ascension. The composition and title of Flight of the Mgizwak (Eagles) Automata reiterate what the schematic reveals. For Ace, the “hardware that drives the electronic age” also contains within it “abstracted pictographic imagery” that recalls Anishinaabe petroglyphs. With this inclusion of e-waste Ace links to earlier forms of communication, closing the gap between past and present. The visual citation is strategic, an assertion of cultural continuance, and a reconnected line.

PRICE: $15,000

Barry Ace Occlude 13 3/4 × 10 5/8 in, 34.9 × 27 cm

Barry Ace 1958 –

COVID-19 Suite photo transfer, electronic components, glass beads on paper Prov enance

Collection of the Artist An image of a shadow—the dark outline of the artist Barry Ace—begins this series.

An iPhone framed between his hands indicates the action of snapping a selfie. To the left of the silhouette, his face is in the foreground. The emotion in the eyes peering over Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) is hard to read; is it a smile or a person locked in terror? The mask obstructs the usual physical cues that communicate someone’s sentiment. The dizzying radial motion of lines diffusing from both inside and outside of the frame add to the perplexity of what is happening. Where does one element end and another begin?

The ambiguity of the title Occlude, also adds to the confusion. Meaning to “close up or block off,” it asks the question—what is being stopped? Is the threat coming from the inside or out? Red beaded lines hit the edge of the image haphazardly but do not enter—are they a boundary of safety or the inability of a lifeline to get through? The flowers provide a clue. The assemblage of electronic resistors, capacitors and light-emitting diodes is a motif often used by Ace, that references the beaded medicine flowers seen in the material culture of the Anishinaabeg. The word for bead, manidoominens, translates as a little “spirit berry,” which carries within it the capacity to transmit power and healing. A petal on each side is sewn onto the self-portrait, a summoning for good medicine.

In the photomontage, a digitally sourced image file of a regulatory PPE mask covers the lower half of the artist’s face, concealing his emotional state in the original image taken at an art exhibition in 2015 when the world was full of possibilities and freedom of movement. By the spring of 2020, it was impossible to understand the full impact of Covid, including the societal as well as financial costs due to our ongoing restrictions of movement. As with many artists, Ace’s career was halted abruptly.

In lockdown, he began a rigorous daily routine of art production, a way out of confinement, if only in his imagination.

The result, Ace’s Covid-19 Series, is an intimate look into the life of a contemporary artist during a global pandemic. For Ace, the pandemic also evoked the nebulous

Barry Ace Resuscitate 10 5/8 × 13 3/4 in, 27 × 34.9 cm

Barry Ace Pathogen 10 5/8 × 13 3/4 in, 27 × 34.9 cm

Barry Ace Protection 13 3/4 × 10 5/8 in, 34.9 × 27 cm

terror at the start of the spread of AIDS in the 1980s. He witnessed many in his community die, and watched how homophobia was the occlusion that blocked necessary medical help as well as human compassion to a vulnerable population rapidly being wiped out. Covid is also a reminder of the statistics on deaths due to smallpox that plagued the Americas post-contact, the spread of the disease hastened by the virus of racism.

In 1918, as World War I ended and troops returned home, the Spanish Flu spread to North America including the region around Manitoulin Island where Ace was born. In the work Influenza the photomontage includes an archival image of Ace’s great-aunt Melvina holding his father Cecil as an infant. His father was born right after the pandemic, and his great-aunt was a survivor. The photograph is juxtaposed with a headline from a newspaper at the time: “Those who are most susceptible to it.”

Tiny red seed beads scatter beyond the boundary “coming out like a swarm” on the other side, the medicine flower. Throughout the series, flowers continue to appear, evoking the charge of healing energy.

Also throughout, Ace has integrated other archival images of Indigenous people.

In Pathogen, the work that ignited the series, an unidentified Indigenous man squares his body in the direction of the camera. A chemical mishap during the exposure of the glass plate has produced a halo effect that encircles him. The image is constrained between beaded soundwaves, alluding to how one’s voice carries both the information about the disease, as well as the disease itself in aerosol particles. In the 1800s, European and North American ethnographers and photographers were rushing to record what was termed “The Vanishing Race,” his portrait a possible result of the urgency to document Indigenous populations before they died out.

In Protection, the portrait is of a known historical figure, Maungwudaus, (Great Hero) an educator, translator, performer and an advocate for the rights of his people.

Anishinaabe, he was born circa 1807 near Mississauga, Ontario but throughout his life he travelled far, touring the United Kingdom, Belgium and France with a dance troupe. While on tour in 1845, he was invited to private receptions with royalty and intelligentsia where he championed Indigenous rights. As he had received a smallpox immunization, he survived the European tour, but many in his troupe did not, including his wife and several children.

Barry Ace Quarantine 13 3/4 × 10 5/8 in, 34.9 × 27 cm

Barry Ace Rate of Infection 13 3/4 × 10 5/8 in, 34.9 × 27 cm

Barry Ace Codification 10 5/8 × 13 3/4 in, 27 × 34.9 cm

Layered onto the image of Maungwudaus, Ace has beaded a Thunderbird (Binesi), a winged spirit in Anishinaabe mythology. In the lower half, Ace has placed another atop an image of digital circuitry. As the Thunderbird is a metaphor for protection and power, so too is the circuitry, each a conduit through which energy flows and a message is carried, whether it be a prayer or a medical alert. Anishinaabe symbols are paired with electronic and digital ephemera in contrast, as well as to draw parallels between these two forms of communication—mythological and technological. Ace notes how both myth and technology require a prescribed set of protocols, whether through ritual or programmed code.

Protocols may be ordered into categories, such as healing rituals, that a culture can access during times of crisis. Codification is the act of ordering them, and in the work so titled, Ace pairs a circuit board schematic with sketches by Shingwauk (1773 – 1854), an Anishinaabe Ogimaa (Chief ), an advocate for Indigenous rights.

The drawings depict the spirit beings of the Anishinaabe legends, the Thunderbird as well as the Mishibijiw, the underwater panther. At the shoreline, before embarking

Barry Ace Dormant 10 5/8 × 13 3/4 in, 27 × 34.9 cm

on a journey across a body of water, rituals would be conducted to appease its spirit, whose realm is in the watery depths. Failure to perform the protocols could lead to devastating effects such as loss of life from a stormy voyage. “The Mishibijiw references how you have to respect signs; if you don’t, there can be repercussions.” Combined with the digital imagery and e-waste ephemera, the signifiers of Anishinaabe power and healing also come to represent the protocols for personal protection during Covid. In the face of a global urgency, when the codification of rules of conduct that ensure physical protection are formalized into policy as well as law, not respecting them may lead to loss of life.

For the photomontages, combining digitally sourced archival images along with his own repository of iPhone “pics” is strategic. Ace inserts biographical provenance while also asserting a linkage to precedents of Indigenous “survivance.”

He establishes a vital relationship to other Indigenous people—both named and unnamed—and whose lives, as with his own, were interrupted by the forces of external threats, and ones, like viral infections and racism, that are often intertwined.

TOP: Barry Ace Transmission 13 3/4 × 10 5/8 in, 34.9 × 27cm

top right: Barry Ace Journey 10 5/8 × 13 3/4 in, 27 × 34.9 cm Bottom right: Barry Ace Influenza 10 5/8 × 13 3/4 in, 27 × 34.9 cm

Barry Ace Premonitory 13 3/4 × 10 5/8 in, 34.9 × 27 cm

Affected by the news of yet another racialized person’s life being extinguished by police brutality, as part of the series Ace beaded a single black square in solidarity with the #BlackLivesMatter movement and the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020. Ace “felt helpless,” both with the ongoing uncertainty of Covid-19 and witnessing “two simultaneous pandemics” take lives unnecessarily, a stark reminder that racism does not pause for pandemics.

Ace’s Covid-19 Series is an autobiographical document of his past and present experiences, as well as his concerns at this historical moment. He also mixes his distinctive Anishinaabe aesthetic with one of his major artistic influences. The

Barry Ace #BlackLivesMatter 10 5/8 × 13 3/4 in, 27 × 34.9 cm

Barry Ace Physical Distance / Presence and Absence (double-sided) 10 5/8 × 13 3/4 in, 27 × 34.9 cm

Barry Ace Contact Tracing 10 5/8 × 13 3/4 in, 27 × 34.9 cm

dual work Physical Distance / Presence and Absence, is an homage to the late Richard Hambleton (1952 – 2017) who, with his lurking “Shadowman” graffiti, was a fixture in New York’s East Village art scene at its height in the mid-1980s. Here, Ace presents a minimalist aesthetic. The outline of one Thunderbird, a precise and defined beaded border, contrasts with evidence of threading from the underside of its companion. Normally hidden, in the loose fragments of cut thread Ace saw a similarity to Hambleton’s “splash technique that rendered the image simultaneously in motion and decay.” In Hambleton’s work Ace also sees a “stark reminder of the presence and absence in the AIDS plague years.” Ace transforms the Thunderbirds into a potent symbol of Indigenous continuance documenting family stories of survival from previous pandemics—living through the AIDS crisis, now Covid.

Barry Ace Ossuary 13 3/4 × 10 5/8 in, 34.9 × 27 cm

In the final work of the series Ace has beaded a Caduceus layering, what has come to represent the universal symbol for health on top of a digital image of traditional Anishinaabe beadwork. Healing flowers stretch out from an embedded circuit board.

The Niigaanaasnok (morning star), the brightest light at Biidaaban (dawn), a powerful symbol of sacred medicine for the Anishinaabeg, crowns all the elements. Ace does not see the work as an ending, rather a ”semicolon” in the ongoing Covid narrative. We still exist on the threshold between pre- and post-Covid, and between those who will survive the virus and those who will succumb to it. Installed as groupings of four, two frames stand apart. Occlude is positioned on its own, isolated as the artist’s life was during lockdown. Physical Distance / Absence and Presence project out from the wall, enabling the viewer to experience the Thunderbirds from both perspectives.

The groupings could resemble the cell of the Covid-19 virus with its extended spikes; they can also be interpreted as the symbol for the Niigaanaasnok, its brilliance still present at the break of a new Biidaaban.

PRICE: $68,500

Barry Ace Herd Immunity 13 3/4 × 10 5/8 in, 34.9 × 27 cm

Barry Ace Vaccine 13 3/4 × 10 5/8 in, 34.9 × 27 cm

TOP: Installation view of COVID-19 Suite

E N CODIN G CU LT U R E T H E WORKS O F BA R RY ACE