Queer Artist Spotlight: Brianna LaPlante
What’s your story?
My name is Brianne LaPlante, I am from Fishing Lake First Nation, but I am currently staying in Regina. I am Cree, Metis and Saulteaux. I am an artist living and working on Treaty 4 Land. I am an artist, mother, sister, daughter. I work really hard to make a life worth living in an urban setting. With that being said, what brings me life is being able to reclaim and express my culture visually. I had my graduating exhibition up all of April, and with that, I realized I am in fact a cohesive artist. I was once worried that I wouldn’t have things to match but once I had put all of my art out in front of me I realized how related everything truly is through adornment, medicine, femme experience, and familial relations, these are all binding themes that connect my artwork and connect my family as well. It really helped with my own personal healing and my family's as well; not knowing that art is a profession, and that art could feed the family. What mediums don’t I work in? I am a drawer, painter, muralist, and sculptor, or rather I work in my traditional medium respectfully, like textiles.
What do you find most important about the work you’re creating?
Continuity, I think the idea that we are resilient and keep moving forward is an important aspect of the artwork I create, especially the urban artwork or less traditionally seen artwork. Because I am a drawer, there are instances where my people were drawers but not much on paper with charcoal or graphite. It would still be two-dimensional but in different ways. The new ways that I’m finding empowering to myself in terms of accessibility, preference, and experience. When you grow up poor, nearly everybody here in Canada has access to paper and pencil, you can ask your teacher or a guy at the store, and everybody can find a pencil and paper, and that’s how I started. Charcoal being my most preferred medium, it was a very easy transition, and it's very expressive and that’s something I need in my own life. It is also about making a safe space where there aren’t safe spaces.
What do you want people to take away from your artwork?
These artworks are an invitation, I have this approach to artwork where it’s almost too beautiful to not look at and engage with it but it does have those darker undertones; with the laughing and crying piece, or the drops on the tongue which is balanced but it also a darker representation of a darker history. I hope that people can connect and relate to my artwork, in their own ways. The people who get the nuances will understand and those who don’t will hopefully one day understand. I like to meet people where they are at and therefore I have developed a visual language that still has aspects of realism although explores the ideas of surrealism by adding certain repeating patterns, and iconography respective to traditions; in the five pieces, you will see the smoke, water, the people, the hidden animals or jewelry. My mum always says “You can’t see the forest while in the trees,” and I like adding those little teachings in little ways, where people have to read into it and make their own meaning from it. It’s a common theme in indigenous storytelling whether it's in an elder or an auntie or a friend, I notice that a lot of indigenous people tell stories that are open-ended so you can take what you can and leave the rest.
How does your identity influence your art practise?
My identity is my art practise. I think where I don’t know my native tongues very fluently or at all, the visual language is where I really grasped because it is a way to express the things that I can't say. It’s a way to express culture in a way that I can understand, but can’t communicate it. You know how languages will be very different and will have different words that English can’t explain, I think that is common in all cultures, not just Native American or Northern Indigenous people. There are words that English just can't express and I feel that is what art really does well for me, which is to express those things that are bigger concepts than what English can catch up to.
What role does the artist have in Regina’s community?
I think we as artists we speak life back into the community and it reflects. For those who are involved in the community and do community work, for example, I do a lot of artwork in North Central like Buckets & Borders, the Yard, and the street painting we do every year on Dewdney Avenue as an art action, amongst other projects. As artists, we really reflect the community and the vibrancy that we come from, we speak art back into the visual language of the communities we come from. I feel when projects are done well and when projects are done respectfully and represent the community well, the community comes back and accepts that artist. It is still an exchange, although we as artists we hope to create art so that people can find some sort of value, lesson, enjoyment, or fulfillment.
What is your dream project?
My dream project? Oh my goodness, I already know I want to go to Santa Fe for school. Aside from the First Nations University of Canada, there is the only one Indigenous art school in New Mexico called IAIA. When I imagine my next big project it would have the concept of braids although it wouldn’t necessarily take form in a physical braid, it would have the idea of involving the community to interweave that spirit, heart, and thinking/mind into something physical that we can manifest together. I really dream about something that involves the community in a big way, in an important way, and in a reflective way. It would be something that is meaningful, not to just me, but to the people around me, and I just want to make something meaningful. My role as an artist on a smaller scale for example is as something as small as one commission, that person has approached you for an exchange of compensation for an idea that they cannot express themself but want it to exist in this world. I want to do that on a bigger scale, but I don’t know how yet.
