Throughout Lori Blondeau’s three-decade artistic career, she has consistently been concerned with the dominant harmful characterizations of Indigenous women in Canada by the presiding white colonial culture. Being a Cree, Saulteaux, and Métis woman from Saskatchewan, Blondeau has frequently used her own image to interrogate persisting conceptions of Indigenous femininity, history, and traditional practice. Utilizing reference points from cultural iconography including Wild West imagery, popular magazines, and institutional symbols, Blondeau criticizes the regnant disregard of Indigenous peoples and their histories. Bringing together Blondeau’s satirical performances and heartfelt meditations, I’m Not Your Kinda Princess at the McMaster Museum of Art underscores the artist’s investment in engaging with the roles of perception, preservation of cultural practice, and assertions of colonialism in the contemporary.
One of the first works seen in the gallery is titled A Tribute to Demasduit (2021). Stretching from floor to ceiling, this image is a photographic self-portrait depicting the artist standing amidst an icy landscape, draped in a rich blue velvet robe exposing only her hands and face. She stands with her arm bent, hand placed on her stomach and her head held high. She gazes into the distance in a traditional pose of regality and power. It is difficult to tear away from its visual majesty and it becomes even more absorbing when the work’s caption is read.
For those unfamiliar with her story, Demasduit was a Beothuk woman of the early 19th century. Despite being captured by British colonialists and held by an Anglican missionary, Demasduit managed to transcribe around 180 Beothuk words, an act that contributed to the preservation of the language as European invaders attempted to exterminate Indigenous communication. During her captivity, Demasduit was forced to draw several maps of her people’s territory for the use of the British colonial effort. The winter landscape Blondeau places herself in is the land on which Demasduit’s brother and sister-in-law were killed by white settlers. Now, the Beothuk people are considered culturally extinct.
In the context of Demasduit’s legacy, Blondeau’s portrait emits an aura of heroism and remembrance, replicating the same air projected by the numerous bronze statues of so named Canadian heroes found in public parks and university campuses. Blondeau’s expression is illuminated by a hard flash, highlighting the piece’s photographic form and communicating the contemporary moment in which it was taken. Decidedly in the present, the artist stands in Demasduit’s stead where her people should have been able to stand themselves – a mournful yet defiant act. Using her own body to perform commemoration, this action of returning to land that was once but is no longer a cultural home inherently criticizes the treatment of Demasduit by the white settlers of her time and consideration for her postmortem. After her death in 1820, Demasduit’s skull was removed from her resting place at Beothuk Lake and held by the National Museum of Scotland until 2020. As a result of efforts made by Indigenous and governmental leaders of Newfoundland and Labrador, 200 years after her death Demasduit is finally at rest. Blondeau’s work was produced only one year following the reparations made on behalf of Demasduit, speaking directly to the importance of a return to territory. Standing as a surrogate, Blondeau’s photograph calls to the self-lead nature of reparations for Indigenous peoples today. Frequently, it is Indigenous peoples who must initiate their own healing with Canadian institutions. In the case of Demasduit, it was Chief Mi’sel Joe of the Miawpukek First Nation at Conne River who commenced and lead the return of her remains, later backed by the Newfoundland and Labrador provincial government. While these cultural and governmental institutions were cooperative in the presented terms, it is far less common for institutions to voluntarily return their stolen artifacts to the communities from which they were taken. At this point, it is Indigenous rights advocates like Blondeau and her Tribute to Demasduit (2021) who continue to lead the protection and preservation of Indigenous histories. With this monumental photograph, an ardent and commanding tone of resistance and community is set for the remainder of the exhibition.
From the next room, the nostalgic songs of Doris Day and an ostentatious monologue beginning with a childhood story in which Blondeau got a glass bottle stuck on her mouth, giving her swollen lips, ring through the space. In the low-lit Tomlinson Gallery, a large projection of Blondeau’s 1998 performance Cosmosquaw plays out. Assuming the recurring character of Blondeau’s creation called Betty Daybird, moves through various over-the-top satirical scenes of womanhood all while dressed in a large beehive wig, a short shift dress, and pearls to match. The artist lounges as she reads her modern Cosmo magazine. A narration of the article exposes the magazine’s contents – instructions on how to attract a man, including the recommendations to speak minimally and smile often — Blondeau mouths along zealously. While the stage is decorated in a 1960s style, the magazine she reads is distinctly from the present day, grounding her critique in the present. With the impossibly thin, blonde model on the cover staring mischievously at the audience, the disparity between the artist and the magazine is blatant. The world projected by the magazine is one without women like Blondeau. The image of perfectly beautiful, impossibly thin and white women pictured in Cosmopolitan is harmful to all women, but for women of colour, it sets an unattainable standard. In addition to being quiet, pleasant, and demure, one must also strive for whiteness to be a deserving and desirable woman. Seeing Blondeau, an outspoken Indigenous rights artist parade around the stage in her best attempt to fit the white ideal is humorous and tragic. She demonstrates the ridiculousness of traditional gender performance while accentuating the intentional exclusion of Indigeneity from the standard of beauty.
When Daybird finishes reading the article, she opens a bottle of wine as ‘The Black Hills of Dakota’ begins to play. At first she takes measured sips, then gradually more and more drunken swigs. She sings along as Doris Day croons, “Take me back to the Black Hills, The Black Hills of Dakota, To that beautiful Indian country that I love”. This reference to the 1953 film Calamity Jane for which the song was written is one of the work’s most pointed in terms of the historical and cultural disregard for Indigenous peoples. Blondeau’s onstage reverence for a song saturated with wistful dreams of home in “Indian country”, makes explicit the colonial perspective of traditional Wild West media. Though depicted as independent explorers of the American landscape, cowboys, even Calamity Jane who pushed gender boundaries in both the movie and reality, are at their core conquerors of the supposed untamed land. The singer’s longing for South Dakota, when delivered through the mouth of Blondeau puts the irony of white settlers’ heartfelt yearning for a home made at the expense of Indigenous lives on full display. Doris Day’s Que Sera Sera begins to serenade Daybird, reassuring her “Whatever will be, will be,”. In contrast to the misplaced colonial longing for home, Blondeau herself embodies a deeply felt yearning for precontact Turtle Island and a peaceful future that did not come to be for Indigenous peoples. The song sweeps over Daybird who stumbles around the stage in need of help. Her pitiful state recontextualizes the usually comforting song into a heartbreaking truth about the loss of control of Indigenous people over their own futures.
These frustrating realities about representation, expectation, and control are punctuated by Blondeau angrily shouting at the audience, “What the Fuck You Lookin’ At? You don’t know me.”. This angered exclamation is the first time Blondeau addresses the viewer. Her abrupt engagement sharpens the critique of the performance and aiming it directly at the audience. With this final sentence and throughout the exhibitions, viewers are confronted by their role as onlookers and the part they have played in constructing the societal circumstances that led to Daybird’s drunken stupor. Though having been invited to look, she yells at the audience for viewing her at her lowest moment. She asks what the audience is looking at as if to say, what else did you expect from a woman you set up to fail?
Betty Daybird’s exasperation at the audience’s gaze and assumption of judgment encapsulates Blondeau’s fixation with the self-portrait image throughout the entire exhibition. Daybird makes the claim that the audience doesn’t know her, a statement that may at first amuse a viewer seated in a room with images of the artist on every wall. However, she is telling the truth when it comes to Cosmosquaw (1998) and most other pieces in the exhibition. Different from many photographic self-portraitists dealing with themes of identity, Blondeau rarely plays herself when she steps in front of the camera. Rather than communicating her identity as Lori Blondeau, she expresses her anger with the common characterization of Indigenous women and her reverence for her cultural traditions as a representative and stand-in. Within the Cosmosquaw (1998) performance and throughout the presented body of work, Blondeau assumes a critical and depictive identity, communicated through campy characters and sincere artistic gestures. Over the past several decades, this technique has made up a large portion of Lori Blondeau’s expansive body of work, using it to expose and exhibit the most tender and raw aspects of Canadian and Indigenous cultures. In embodying these abstract cultural imaginings of Indigenous peoples, Blondeau vigorously interrogates the hegemony of ethnic stereotypes and cultural depictions while maintaining power and care for Indigenous traditions and rituals. Questioning the role of the viewer as voyeur in the gallery and the colonial implications of looking away, I’m Not Your Kinda Princess is compulsory viewing for those interested in navigating the relationship between perception and preservation informed by Indigenous identity.
Lori Blondeau, I’m Not Your Kinda Princess at the McMaster Museum of Art, June 6 – August 30, 2024
Images courtesy of Laura Findlay, exhibition photographer at the McMaster Museum of Art
Kenna Robinson is an emerging artist and writer based in Toronto. She is currently completing her BFA in Photography Media Arts at Toronto Metropolitan University. She has been writing for Centred since 2021.
