A vast exhibition featuring close to thirty young artists from across North America, New Zealand, and Norway, Claiming Space, in exploring themes of art and decolonization, functions as both a show and a statement. Within the Museum of Anthropology (on the unceded territory of the Musqueam people), the visitor's transition past the scores of conserved totem poles, house posts, and carvings on display throughout the Great Hall and into the O’Brian Gallery occurs through a shift away from the light filled hall and deafening silence into a darkly lit space humming with monitors and projectors. 
Deanna Bittern, She, 2013
Focusing on five key issues – colonization, assimilative policies, adapting traditions, the objectification of Indigenous women's bodies, and the impact of modern day consumer culture through the lens of emerging voices – curator Pam Brown (Heiltsuk Nation) and curatorial assistant Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers (Blackfoot, Blood Reserve/Sami, northern Norway) have taken great care selecting a range of perspectives and mediums. From performance, music, painting, drawing, text, photography, and textile to an overwhelming amount of video works stacked across several viewing stations, the show ebbs and flows from one to the other (though it stalls at the viewing stations, which would have benefited from larger screens and more seating options).
By selecting artists between 15 and 25 years of age and emphasizing the theme of urban Indigenous youths “asserting their identity and affirming their relationship to both urban spaces and ancestral territories,” the curators reveal the gap in knowledge and experience between what appears in the Great Hall and what is on view inside the O'Brian Gallery. The space between the stories of the totem poles and this new generation of righteous young voices is the space that still needs to be claimed and heard.
Museum of Anthropology - O’Brian Gallery: http://moa.ubc.ca/experience/exhibit_details.php?id=1335
Claiming Space: Voices of Urban Aboriginal Youth continues until January 4.
Amy Fung is a writer and organizer who publishes nationally and internationally in journals, magazines, catalogues, and monographs in print and online. Her ongoings can be found at POSTpacificPOST.com and on Twitter @anotheramyfung. This is her last review as Akimblog's Vancouver correspondent. She is relocating to Toronto and taking on the position of Artistic Director at the Images Festival.
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Claiming Space at the Museum of Anthropology
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