Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun: Spirit Dancer Dances Around the Fire

Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun Spirit Dancer Dances Around the Fire

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Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun 1957 – Canadian Indigenous

Spirit Dancer Dances Around the Fire acrylic on canvas, 2016 signed 139 × 216 in, 353.1 × 548.6 cm Prov e n an c e

Acquired directly from the Artist by the present Private Collection, Vancouver, 2016 L ite rat u r e

Karen Duffek, editor, Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun: Unceded Territories, Museum of Anthropology at UBC, 2016, the artist with the work in progress reproduced pages 156 and 157 and listed page 176 Robin Lawrence, “Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun Creates Confrontation by Canvas at the Museum of Anthropology,” Georgia Strait, April 27, 2016, accessed April 27, 2021

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Marsha Lederman, “Yuxweluptun’s Exhibition Brings You Face to Face with Indigenous History,” Globe and Mail, May 15, 2016, accessed April 27, 2021 Michael Abatemarco, “Spirit Shining Through: Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun,” Pasatiempo, August 3, 2018, accessed April 27, 2021 Exhibit e d

Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver, Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun: Unceded Territories, May 10 – October 16, 2016, catalogue #156

Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun was born in Kamloops—his father was from the Cowichan Tribes, Coast Salish First Nation and his mother was Syilx, part of the Okanagan Nation Alliance. It was a politically active household, and consequently, Yuxweluptun was very aware at a young age of the many issues facing his people. Consequently, his paintings often include politically charged subject matter. The artist is a participant in the cultural practices of his people—at 17, he was initiated in a Salish longhouse, becoming

both a Black Face dancer and a Sxwayxwey dancer, and inherited the name Yuxweluptun, (man who possesses many masks).

Yuxweluptun studied at Emily Carr College of Art and Design, and although he uses the formline designs of the Coast Salish like the ovoid and the U-form, he is a modernist in his approach to his images, and does not use traditional Northwest Coast first Nations art forms. His colours are intense, almost psychedelic, and his work shows the influence of Surrealism and transcendentalism. However, Yuxweluptun chooses to describe this aspect of his style as “visionism”. He explains “The symbolic forms are interchangeable, based on my needs when I make a painting . . . The symbolism transforms into landscape and other forms to create a vision.”

Over many years, Yuxweluptun painted works based on the private rituals performed in longhouses. In winter, spirit dances and mystery singing were an important manifestation of the guardian spirit complex of the Salish. Spirit Dancer Dances Around the Fire is an important large-scale religious tableau masterwork. It depicts the sacred space of the longhouse at night, where rituals are performed. It was considered that spirit powers arrived with the advent of the cold season, when the physical vitality of the people was low, and rituals performed at that time had a mystical, healing effect. Spirit dancing, and its performance in the protected and sacred space of the longhouse has always been a big influence on Yuxweluptun’s life. In paintings like this, he states “If you can’t be in a longhouse, I bring the longhouse to you. I’m trying to make it timeless and visionary. A lot of my work is from memory, so it becomes more timeless in its vision. I’ve been in longhouses where I’ve felt like I was there five thousand years ago. There’s no electricity, you have a sense of the fire, and then you’re listening to 500 drums, seeing somebody’s spirit song. That’s some of the things that go on in the spirit ceremonies in the winter. It’s about that part of my life.”

Works like this embody the true spirituality of Indigenous people, but are also an expression of the repudiation of foreign religious beliefs, as imposed by Christian missionaries, ministers and priests. Religious practices of the Northwest Coast were outlawed by the Canadian government throughout most of the twentieth century. However hard they tried to crush it, however, it still continued, albeit underground. Yuxweluptun states, “I’m showing the world that this is how we pray, that it wasn’t destroyed under colonialism rule; that when they tried to outlaw our culture, this still goes on . . . So we’ve never lost our culture; it was hidden and it still is a very private place.” However, now there is a resurgence of Indigenous culture: dance societies, canoe carving, art and ritual.

Spirit Dancer Dances Around the Fire is a stunning painting. It depicts an interaction between dancers and beings of the spirit realm, who they embody. They transform into gigantic figures, the most powerful of which are the red figure with the drum and the wolf-like figure in the centre, whose gleaming eye and exposed teeth project an aura of danger and alert readiness for action. The

Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun in his studio working on Spirit Dancer Dances Around the Fire, 2016 Photo: Ken Mayer

three musicians invoke their transformation. The fires, with their licking flames, shapes of burning wood and the rich pools of golden light around them, are beautiful. Through the door, guarded by spirit figures, the moon lights a dream-like landscape—headlands with swirling motifs, the sea and a snow-covered form, seemingly conjured by the altered state created in the longhouse. We bear witness to the strength of the ritual, and its resonance in the physical and spiritual realms. Spirit Dancer Dances Around the Fire is profound, an embodiment of the power of Salish beliefs in the spirit realm.

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