Press Release

This fall, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive presents the first major survey exhibition of Duane Linklater (b. Omaskêko Cree, b. 1976, Treaty 9 territory), whose work explores the contradictions of contemporary Indigenous life within settler colonial systems of knowledge, representation, and value. Duane Linklater: mymothersside features more than thirty works by the artist, who has become a leading voice in the contemporary art world over the past decade, with important contributions to the 2022 Whitney Biennial and the 2023 Saõ Paulo Biennial. The exhibition surveys the wide scope of Linklater’s interdisciplinary practice, encompassing painting, sculpture, video, performance, and a large-scale intervention into the architecture of the museum.

Duane Linklater, mymothersside

University of California, Berkeley (USA)

07.10.2023 -25.02.2024

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Based in North Bay, Ontario, Linklater has been celebrated for a practice that interrogates what he calls “the physical and theoretical structures of the museum” in relation to the exclusion of Indigenous cultural production past and present. His work references ancestral traditions—ranging from hunting to fur trading to berry gathering—alongside popular bands and films of his youth, including the English rock band The Cure and the Kiowa guitarist Jesse Ed Davis. This mixing of a wide range of cultural influences suggests an expansive constellation of affinities that defies reductive notions of identity.

Duane Linklater: mymothersside features multiple structures made with tepee poles, highlighting the artist’s interest in deconstructing and reassembling the traditional Cree dwelling. These large-scale architectural installations will be displayed alongside Linklater’s draped and folded tepee-cover paintings, shaped canvases the artist makes using a combination of digital printing and natural dyeing techniques. A centerpiece of BAMPFA’s exhibition will be wintercount_215_kisepîsim, mistranslate_wolftreeriver_ ininîmowinîhk (2022), a multi-part installation featuring abstract canvases, each measuring over 18 feet, hung in the round and made using natural dyes including cochineal, orange pekoe tea, charcoal, sumac, and blueberry extract. This monumental work will be on view for the first time since its debut at the 2022 Whitney Biennial.

Film and video have long been important aspects of Linklater’s practice, and his survey at BAMPFA will also include multiple examples of these works—including several digital transfers of 16mm and Super 8mm short films. Modest Livelihood (2012), Linklater’s collaboration with Brian Jungen, follows the artists on a hunting trip in Dane-zaa Territory in Northern British Columbia. While hunting is deeply embedded in both artists’ ancestral traditions, the film’s title references the Canadian Supreme Court’s controversial 1999 ruling that First Nations can hunt and fish on their own territory provided that such activity not exceed what might be considered a “moderate livelihood.” In conjunction with BAMPFA’s exhibition, Linklater and his son Tobias Linklater, who together perform as eagles with eyes closed, will score the silent, 50-minute film for the first time in a live musical performance on Wednesday, February 21.

Exhibition 07 October 2023 - 25 February 2024. University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), 2155 Center Street - Berkeley, CA 94720 (USA).

Duane Linklater, can the circle be unbroken 1–5, 2019. Installation view, mymothersside, Frye Art Museum, Seattle, 2021. Collection SFMOMA. Photo: Jueqian Fang.