Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History *with chapters* | CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History Podcast

Chapter 12: "Ex Voto / Lung": This chapter describes Ex Voto / Lung by Shelagh Keeley, created in 1990, and measuring 145 by 95 cm. It is one and a half minutes long. You can reach out to feel the edges of this frame. This drawing is much larger than the majority of those in the exhibition! And there is one word to describe this set of lungs: messiness. Though the outline is drawn in graphite, or pencil, the edges of the oblong biological vessel are smudged, and there are dense layers of thick black charcoal that create the shadows or roundness of the lungs. A section of orange and pink pigment mixed together in the centre of the left lung creates the impression of a glowing, pulsating shape underneath, a sense heightened by the cloudy and translucent quality of the paper. The artist has also smeared a transparent wax over the drawing, and it creates a tactility to it, as we imagine the artist using her hands to pull the wax down and across the surface. The lungs almost reach all four by CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

2 min listen

Chapter 16: "Plans for Tee-pee at the First Native Business Summit": This chapter describes Plans for Tee-pee at the First Native Business Summit by Bob Boyer, created in 1986, measuring 38 by 50 cm. It is two and a half minutes long. We are now at the back of the gallery, the top of the “L.” This ink and watercolour drawing is a diagram of the outside and inside of a teepee, flattened across a horizontal white piece of paper. A teepee is a conical tent structure, typically made with canvas (or animal hides) and stretched across a framework of wooden poles. It is primarily used by Indigenous peoples of the prairies. Here, Boyer has drawn the front and side view of the teepee in the top half of the composition: three triangles touch at the bottom corners. At either end, a rectangular tab has been added and labeled “cut and fold and ??,” similar to a paper model. The design includes a red zigzag line along the bottom, with green underneath. There are two eagles, wings outstretched, on by CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

3 min listen

Chapter 18: "Man with Snowmobile": This chapter describes Man with Snowmobile by Kananginak Pootoogook, created in 2006, and measuring 51 by 67 cm. There is a tactile version of this drawing. It is labeled “2.” This chapter is one and a half minutes long. This work depicts an Inuk man standing just behind his bright red snowmobile. The fur-lined hood of his white atigi, or parka, is pulled up around his face. There are bands of orange, blue and dark green trim on the bottom of his sleeves and hem. His matching pants and blue tinted sunglasses complete the outfit. Pootogook has included many details of the snowmobile, from the various components of the green outboard motor on the back to the gears of the track. The details stand out even more because the artist hasn’t included a background, just the white paper: we can focus on the cold and shiny red chrome, the smell of gasoline, how the fur trim would feel against our faces. Perhaps the background evokes the white tundra. Along the b by CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

1 min listen

Chapter 9: "Sans titre (Henry Moore, Reclining Figure et Vertebrae)" Part 2: This chapter describes part 2 of Sans titre by Melanie Myers. It is two minutes long. A confession: there was something left out of the description of Sans titre (Henry Moore, Reclining Figure et Vertebrae) in the previous chapter. And that’s because there is also something missing from Myers’ drawings: In the triptych, there are three white, irregular shapes – simply the papier mache base. Each one is different, with a point sticking upwards, or a curved bottom. It is a stark contrast to the forested area. The shapes are, in fact, the three components of renowned sculptor Henry Moore’s large bronze work, titled “Three-piece Sculpture: Vertebrae.” And indeed, they do look like the curved components of a spine, there but not there, in the forest. Below, in the shallows, there is another white shape, much larger: it is Henry Moore’s Reclining Figure. Myers has built the abstracted female form using papier mâché by CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

2 min listen

Chapter 15: Curatorial label for "Untitled": This chapter is the text written by curator Heather Anderson for Untitled. It is a minute long. Kim Moodie is known for his highly detailed ink drawings. Mining and mixing historical traditions and cultural genres from illuminated manuscripts to comic books, graphic novels and children’s books, Moodie has developed a striking lexicon of imagery that densely populates the drawing space and offers infinite narrative possibilities. Moodie created this fantastical work with twenty-five pages torn from a sketchbook and arranged in a grid. Each page is fully activated with the artist’s energetic, bold black lines depicting a host of beings and objects. We can observe that the drawings do not continue from one page to the next, yet the artist’s use of line, pattern and balance of negative and positive space creates the effect of a continuous, interconnected realm with manifold scenes of action. Please move to the next stop, make a 180 degree turn by CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

1 min listen

Chapter 14: "Untitled": This chapter describes Untitled by Kim Moodie, created in 1997, and measuring 125 by 117 cm. There is a tactile version of one part of this drawing. It is labeled “1.” This chapter is 2 minutes long. This large drawing is composed of 20 8 ½ by 11 sheets of white paper, pulled roughly from a spiral notebook, and arranged in a grid, four down and five across. Using only a thick black felt tip pen, the artist has created something similar to a page from a comic book, with 20 cells, or scenes. Crudely drawn characters appear across these scenes, pulled from pop culture and history: witches, spiders, Godzilla, Frankenstein’s monster. In the top left corner, a mummy wrapped in bandages lifts a giant bird by their outstretched wings, or maybe tries to keep it from flying away. Fights unfold across the pages: a soldier wields a gun in one scene and throws a grenade in another. Walls, towers and obelisks populate the background, as does a set of empty chairs which keep by CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

2 min listen

Chapter 7: Mélanie Myers: Mélanie Myers is a Francophone artist based in Gatineau, and was invited to be part of the exhibition by Heather Anderson, CUAG’s curator. You can hear her reflection on Mélanie’s artwork in Chapter 10. This chapter will give an overall description of Mélanie’s installation, and the next two chapters will go into more detail. Then you’ll hear from Melanie herself. This chapter is a minute long. Mélanie’s installation is in the Main Gallery, along the wall that has very high ceilings. There are two pillars on either side of this section, and stairs to the right. Her installation consists of four parts, two on the wall and two freestanding in front of you. Each is made from papier mâché on which she has intricately drawn a lake and forest scene, similar to a stage set. Go to the next chapter for information on Myers’ work. by CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

1 min listen

Chapter 8: "Sans titre (Henry Moore, Reclining Figure et Vertebrae)" Part 1: This chapter describes part 1 of Sans titre by Melanie Myers, made in 2022-23. It is two minutes long. In front of you is a set of two free-standing French doors one and a half metres apart. The artist has constructed them using papier mâché, and they are roughly the size of real doors: a little more than half a metre by 2 metres. On the backside, Myers has used pencil crayon to draw wood grain, but on the front, there is nothing so ordinary: it holds a beautifully drawn surface of a lake with lily pads floating on it. Behind the doors, through this portal, are two drawings on top of one another: the lower is a continuation of the shallow water with tree branches sticking out of the water, and ducks floating on the surface, partially hidden by the branches. Above is a triptych of the opposite shore of the lake, complete with a dense wooded area and thick red and orange undergrowth. Myers has drawn the details by CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

2 min listen

Chapter 17: Curatorial Label for "Plans for Tee-pee at the First Native Business Summit": This chapter is the text written by curator Danielle Printup for Plans for Tee-pee at the First Native Business Summit. It is a minute long. Bob Boyer was a renowned Métis artist, art historian, curator and educator who exhibited his work across Canada and internationally. Working across sectors in education, art and community organizations, Boyer was a passionate individual who significantly contributed to Indigenous visual arts in Canada. In 1986 Robert Houle invited Boyer to participate as a special guest artist at the First Native Business Summit in Toronto. This colourful drawing of a tee-pee in diagrammatic form is the design for the interior lining of the full-size tee-pee that Boyer later constructed for New Beginnings, an exhibition he co-curated with Houle for the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina. The next artwork is to the right of Boyer’s, so stay here for the next stop. by CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

1 min listen

Chapter 11: Curatorial label for Mélanie Myers: This chapter is the text written by curator Heather Anderson. It is two minutes long. Heather writes:Mélanie Myers explores the genres of landscape and land art as mediated by photographs, drawing from the seemingly unlimited image bank available on the Internet. Myers leverages drawing and papier-mâché as a practical and economical way of engaging with monumental sculptures sited in the landscape, extending an earlier theme of her work in which she examined touchstone works of land art by Richard Serra and Michael Heizer among others. In this new installation, the Gatineau-based artist depicts a rugged Canadian forest landscape as though seen from the water. In the upper triptych, white “negative space” forms inhabit the shoreline amidst stumps, branches and a dense screen of coniferous trees. These ghost-like shapes reference British artist Henry Moore’s Three Piece Sculpture: Vertebrae (1968-69). In the drawing below, another enigmati by CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

2 min listen

Chapter 37: "Aujourdh’ui l’echo de l’orage resonne": This chapter describes a pastel on paper drawing titled Aujourd’hui l’echo de l’orage resonne by Rita Letendre, created in 1982, and measuring 47 by 67 cm. It is one and a half minutes long. Can you feel a storm after it passes? Maybe in the smell of the air, or the temperature change. In Aujourd’hui l’echo de l’orage resonne, or “today the echo of the storm resounds,” Rita Letendre focuses on sounds and reverberations. She has used pastel, a chalky pigmented material, to create an abstract composition of horizontal bands of vivid colour, blurring or almost vibrating as they transition upwards from rich blue to yellow to pale green to orange to red to black to blue and then back to red. Is her inspiration the sky after a storm, or is it the artist reflecting on the aftereffects of a more personal, emotional storm? As she has written, “My paintings are completely emotional, full of hair-trigger intensity. Through them, I challenge sp by CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

2 min listen

Chapter 10: Interview with Mélanie Myers: This chapter features an interview with artist Mélanie Myers. It is three and a half minutes long. Hi Mélanie, how would you describe your drawing style? I use colored pencil, often drawing on prepared sheets or prepared structures of papier-mâché reliefs. The drawings are textured with tight repetitive marks, dense, quite colorful, figurative. I think I impose strict little rules on myself without fully realizing. I feel like I draw what I see, like anyone else would. It's funny when I work with my assistant in the studio and I have to try to verbally explain to her how to draw the same as I did, that's when I notice the rules and constraints I’m self-imposing. For example, strokes that generally go in the same direction to form patches of color. Colors that do not overlap but touch each other. Unless it's pale. But 80% of the time it is pressed hard on the pencil. There is negotiation between reproducing reality and letting go, or just follo by CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

4 min listen

Chapter 4: Explanation of wayfinding on the floor: This chapter provides you with a description of the wayfinding tools that are part of the audio description tour. It is a minute long. There will be audio cues within the audio description tour that will direct you through the gallery and to the various stops on the tour. Once you go down the stairs, there are also tactile floor markings that will help lead you on a one-way path clockwise around the gallery to the stops in front of the artworks. There are twelve stops on the tour. Stops will be marked with a circle composed of smaller felt circles. There are also tactile representations of several artworks, held in a tote bag provided at the front desk, that you can take with you on the tour. They are numbered and the audio description tour will notify you when there is one available at that stop. Please go down the stairs to the main floor. The stairs have railings and turn twice to the right. You will find the tactile path at the b by CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

1 min listen

Chapter 13: Curatorial label for "Ex Voto / Lung": This chapter is the text written by Mckenzie Holbrook for Ex-Voto / Lung. It is a minute long. After graduating from York University in Toronto in 1977, Shelagh Keeley spent the next two decades between New York and Paris, creating the large-scale drawing and installation works for which she is acclaimed. Currently working out of Toronto, Keeley describes her practice as a visceral and cerebral activity. Keeley’s process is intuitive, often beginning the work with no set end in mind but rather exploring how her improvisational drawing takes shape. This encaustic drawing of a pair of lungs brings together much of Keeley’s philosophy of creation. She proposes that drawing offers an index of the artist’s body and expression, evidenced here by evocative linework which carries traces of her hand. Please move to the next stop, on the other side of this floating wall. Turn right and move for 2 metres, turn left for another 2 metres and t by CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

1 min listen

Chapter 5: "Medusa": This chapter describes Medusa by Ed Pien, created in 2012. It is two minutes long. Tilt your head up, and imagine you’re standing underneath the canopy of a huge, knobbly tree, maybe a willow. The artist has created the tangled upper branches by cutting out the negative space from two different materials crinkled, flattened and layered on top of each other: translucent Japanese paper called Shoji paper and reflective film (similar to the material used on nighttime running outfits or highway signs). Though it appears to be almost black, as you move closer, the spotlights above hit it and reveal a beautiful purple-grey shimmer. The paper cutting has been intricately done, with some branches almost as thin as a spider’s web, or strands of hair, tangled together. Larger silhouetted forms appear caught in the branches. This, along with the title Medusa, evokes the long tresses of that fearsome and perhaps misunderstood mythological character. The artist has also cut s by CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

2 min listen

Chapter 20: "Summer Landscape": This chapter describes Summer Landscape by Kazuo Nakamura, created in 1954, and measuring 39 by 57 cm. It is a minute long. This drawing is hung above another landscape watercolour drawing by John Esnor. In Nakamura’s drawing, the artist used staccato brushstrokes of watercolour pigments to create a minimal, almost abstract, landscape scene of two trees standing on the left in a grassy field. Bright greens, vivid teal-tinged blues and hints of ochre are used to depict the leaves, grasses and smaller trees in the background. Water makes the colourful brushstrokes feather out, as it soaks into the thick paper. It mimics the haze of summer heat that can sometimes blur your perception. Was the artist standing in this field while he painted it, the short and messy brushstrokes reflecting his rush to capture the colours and light of this view? Much of the page is left unfilled, and there are no details about the specific location. To hear more about this wo by CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

1 min listen

Chapter 30: "Glade and House": This chapter describes Glade and House by Emily Carr, created in 1945, and measuring 89 by 61 cm. It is a minute long. In this scene, tall trees dwarf a simple box cabin, built on the edge of a cleared section of the forest. The clearing, or glade, has been painted in muddy yellows, and is dotted with short black tree trunks. At this time, Carr, the renowned West Coast painter, used a thinned oil paint that had a consistency of cream. The brown paper underneath peaks out between the softly arched brushstrokes of varied greens she has used to depict the branches of the trees or the blue of the sky. These expressive gestures attempt to capture the aliveness of this scene, though it seems a stark commentary on human impact on the land. Though the cabin, and its invisible owner inside, seems enveloped by the trees, who knows how long it will be before they become stumps? What future is the owner of the cabin pondering as they stand looking out of those two t by CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

1 min listen

Chapter 3: Description of the gallery: This chapter provides you with a physical description of the art gallery. It is a minute and a half long. The Carleton University Art Gallery has two floors and is shaped like an “L.” The mezzanine, or upper level, where you arrived, and probably are right now, is a large balcony that spans the long stem of the “L.” There are two stairs, one in the crook of the L, close to where the gallery monitor sits at the front desk, and one at the top of the L. There is a railing that extends along the tall stem of the “L”, and there is a curved railing beside the front desk that looks down into the High Gallery (or small part of the “L” below). The audio description will bring you on a route for artworks on the main level, below. On this level, the long stem of the “L” is 23 metres long by 9 and a half metres wide. It has 2.4 m high ceilings, except along one wall, where it extends up to the mezzanine level above. This is the same height in the High Galle by CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

1 min listen

Chapter 2: About the Exhibition: This chapter introduces the exhibition and is 3 minutes long. It was written by CUAG curators Heather Anderson, Sandra Dyck and Danielle Printup. CUAG turned thirty in the fall of 2022; we’re celebrating our birthday with Drawing on Our History. Drawing on Our History is an experiment. We organized it using a polyvocal curatorial model that embodies and furthers our long history of collaborative exhibition-making. Each person on the curatorial team—five guest curators with whom CUAG has worked in the past and three CUAG staff members—invited a Canadian artist with a timely and compelling drawing practice. The drawings and drawing-based works made by these eight artists open conversations with drawings selected from Carleton University’s art collection. Drawing on Our History illuminates over seventy years of art-collecting activity at Carleton. It presents the first drawing acquired by the University, which commissioned Elizabeth Harrison to render its by CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

3 min listen

Chapter 1: About the Audio Description tour: This chapter introduces the audio description tour. Hello - Welcome to the Audio Description tour for “Drawing on Our History.” My name is Fiona Wright, and I am the educator at Carleton University Art Gallery, or “CUAG.” This audio description tour will provide you with an overall description of the exhibition, as well as specific artworks and installations. You’ll hear from a few of the artists as well. There were so many artworks to choose from – the exhibition has over 100 artworks in it! I hope that we’ve chosen ones that can give you a real sense of the diversity of artists, and their expansive use of drawing. The Audio Description tour will lead you on a path to ten art works from the CUAG collection, as well as three installations by contemporary Canadian artists. There will often be multiple chapters at each stop, which will include a description of an artwork, and then more information from the curators or artists. The total le by CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

1 min listen

Chapter 6: Curatorial label for "Medusa": This chapter is the text written by curator Heather Anderson for Medusa. It is a minute and a half minutes long. Ed Pien drew with a knife to create this shimmering tentacular tree with human figures amongst its branches. In 2004, Pien, who immigrated from Taiwan to Canada as a child, made a research trip to China where he encountered a spectacular cut-paper piece while visiting a temple. He began experimenting with the ancient Chinese art of papercutting, which dates back to the Northern and Southern Dynasties (385-581 AD). The monumental tree, figures and ropes in Medusa reference La pendaison (1633), a renowned etching by French artist Jacques Callot and American artist Nancy Spero’s Maypole: Take No Prisoners (2008), a sculpture comprising a central pole hung with colourful ribbons and cut aluminum heads. While Medusa shares these artworks’ indictment of violence, Medusa is also inspired by Pien’s experience of fireflies amongst ancient by CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

1 min listen

Chapter 31: Curatorial label for "Glade and House": This chapter is the text written by Mckenzie Holbrook for Glade and House. It is a minute long. With its rhythmic brushstrokes and monumental trees, Glade and House demonstrates Emily Carr’s loose, expressive approach to painting on paper, in keeping with the large scale of the environment on British Columbia’s West Coast. The warm ochre tones suggest late summer or early autumn, painted with oil paints thinned with gasoline, which Carr valued for its economy and portability when working outside. Carr’s sweeping brush strokes emphasize the majestic trees, while the stumps in the foreground that line the path to the house at the centre of the composition, remind us of the giants that have been felled. Please move to the next stop. Turn to the right and continue along this wall for 5 and a half metres. by CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

1 min listen

Chapter 36: Curatorial label for Marigold Santos: This chapter is the text written by curator Alice Ming Wai Jim. It is two minutes long. Alice writes: Marigolds thrive in the arid climates of Marigold Santos’s desert landscape paintings, one of which appears in the background of her studio depicted in the ink drawing shroud (arid interior I). The scene also affords us a glimpse of the artist’s take on the asuang (aswang), a traditionally terrifying shapeshifting creature of Filipino folklore. Multiple configurations of this powerful, amorphous being populate Santos’s drawings and ceramics. Her reimagined asuang figures appear in numerous poses and positions — their shrouds at times made of thick dark masses, mystical woven textiles or braided voluminous hair, or exchanged for largebrimmedveiled hats of different styles. The asuang mythology arose from the Babaylan — pillars of society as shamans and healers in pre-colonial Philippines — whose meaning and purpose were inverted by the by CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

2 min listen

Chapter 33: "flower abstraction (elongated) 1, 2, 3": This chapter describes flower abstraction (elongated) 1, 2, 3 by Marigold Santos, made in 2022 and measuring four metres high. There is a tactile version of this drawing. It is labeled “6.” This chapter is a minute and half long. In this artwork, Marigold created an enlarged vinyl version of a black drawing of three imagined flowers. They snake up the wall of the gallery vertically, reaching the level of the balcony above. In the tactile version of this drawing, you can feel the stems, petals and leaves. Each flower has at least three distinct parts, bottom, middle and top, and the stems zig zag in different sections, before separating off into small blooms of various shapes and sizes. The designs have very bold linework and are very stylized. The flowers appear to be surreal or otherworldly. Santos is also a tattoo artist, and these black graphics recall a flash sheet, which tattoo artists use to display pre-designed creations. Th by CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

2 min listen

Chapter 25: "Ilakka": This chapter describes Ilakka by Gayle Uyagaqi Kabloona, made in 2023 and measuring 35 cm high and 20 cm wide at the base and 12 cm wide at the top. It is a minute and a half long. Behind you and to your left, one metre away, there is a display case with three vessels of varying sizes. Ilakka is the largest! 35 cm high, if you were to run your hands up the sides from bottom to top, your hands would go out and in, out and in, four times, with the curves growing progressively small as you reached the top. They are slightly irregular, and the exterior has not been glazed, so the reddish-brown clay feels dry and slightly rough. Instead of an overall glaze, Kabloona dipped her fingertip in white liquid clay and pressed it on the vessel while still wet, making dots all the way around, top to bottom. There must be hundreds! Each dot has then been turned into a face using tiny black brushstrokes: two eyebrows, two eyes, two dots for a nose and mouth. The variations of the by CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

2 min listen

Chapter 32: Marigold Santos: Marigold Santos is a Filipino-Canadian artist based in Calgary, and was invited to be part of the exhibition by Alice Ming Wai Jim, a curator and art historian at Concordia University in Montreal. You can hear her written reflection on Marigold’s artwork in Chapter 36. This chapter will give an overall description of Marigold’s installation, and the next two chapters will describe specific works within the installation. Then you’ll hear from Marigold herself. This chapter is a minute long. Marigold’s installation is in a corner of the High Gallery, close to one of the gallery’s exits. The ceilings here are 6 metres high and you might hear visitors on the floor above, as the balcony stretches out into the space above you. The largest part of this installation is a black floral design made of vinyl and applied directly to the gallery wall, 4 metres high. It is 4 and a half metres in front of you. There are also nine other works hung on the wall, some quite da by CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

1 min listen

Chapter 38: Credits: This audio description tour was written by Fiona Wright and recorded and edited by Nicole Bedford. Thank you to Rich Hillborn and Ludmilla Dubuisson for being the voices of the descriptions, and to artists Melanie Myers, Gayle Uyagaqi Kabloona and Marigold Santos for their input. Thank you to the members of Ottawa’s blind and low vision community who consulted on this tour in the early stages, as well as Carla Ayukawa. Thank you to Walter Zanetti for making the floor tracks and to Patrick Lacasse, who installed them. Thank you to the curatorial team: Heather Igloliorte, Alice Ming Wai Jim, Anna Khimasia, Alexandra Kahsenni:io Nahwegahbow, Kosisochukwu Nnebe, Danielle Printup, Heather Anderson and Sandra Dyck. Artworks were generously loaned by the artists, private collectors, TD Bank Corporate Art Collection, Patel Brown, Cooper Cole, Norberg Hall and The Next Contemporary. The exhibition is supported by The Joe Friday and Grant Jameson Contemporary Art Fund, The by CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

1 min listen

Chapter 35: Interview with Marigold Santos: This chapter features an interview with artist Marigold Santos. It is two and a half minutes long. Hi Marigold, what is the inspiration or story behind your work in Drawing on Our History? The works in this exhibition come from various moments in my practice from the last 5 years or so. They range in material and application, from works on paper to ceramics, paintings, and includes my tattoo practice, which is another form of mark making and drawing for me. This particular collection of works reflect on, and speak of, the body, embodiment of experience, self-hood, empowerment, and diaspora. The imagery consists of figures reconfigured from folklore, objects pulled from sensorial memories like touch, taste, and smell, and textures and patterns that come from my heritage and the landscape of my childhood. Why do you choose to use Tagalog in some of the titles of your work? My family immigrated to Canada in the late 80’s and I was just a child. by CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

2 min listen

Chapter 34: "shroud (buntis na erotica) 1": This chapter describes the ink drawing shroud (buntis na erotica) 1, made in 2021 and measuring 33 x 25 cm. long. It is a minute and a half long. Two female figures dance together, each draped in a delicate, transparent cloth, or shroud. Their bodies mirror each other: the back of one hand is posed on one hip and the other hand is raised in the hair, bringing the shroud up along with it. They each step one foot towards each other, bringing them closer, almost intimately, together. Though the different elements of their bodies: breasts, swollen bellies and arms, are visible, their faces remain completely obscured by the shroud and by the splotches of ink that dot their whole bodies. The use of the veil teases us by hiding and revealing the dancers’ bodies, perhaps apt as the title of the artwork “buntis na erotica” means “pregnant erotica” in Tagalog. With no background, the attention is focused wholly on these women’s gestures and powerful bo by CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

1 min listen

Chapter 28: Study for “Cradle”: This chapter describes Study for “Cradle” by Faye HeavyShield, created in 1992, and measuring 61 by 47 cm. There is a tactile version of this drawing. It is labeled “5.” This chapter is one minute long. In this graphite drawing, the artist has sketched out a baby’s garment, similar to a blanket with a peaked hood. Though the hood is up and the garment is filled out as if there is a little body inside, the face opening is dark. HeavyShield has layered dark pencil markings so that it creates the effect of a deep, cavernous void inside. Surrounding the form is a long triangular shape in soft pencil marks, almost like a shadow. The fabric is unpatterned, a simple white. The title “Cradle” perhaps refers to a cradle board, made and used by Indigenous peoples to protect and hold babies on their mother’s back. To hear more about this work, play the next track. Or move to the next stop. Continue on the path directly behind you, for 5 metres, crossing the gall by CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

1 min listen

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