S0NNY ASSU

Painter, sculpture/installation and mixed media artist

Regarded as a ‘ Vanguard’ for his piece in the Vancouver Art Gallery’s exhibit, How Soon Is Now?  Sonny Assu continues to push the boundaries of contemporary art by challenging the perception of Aboriginal art.

A multi-disciplinary artist, Assu merges Northwest Coast Aboriginal iconography with the aesthetics of popular culture to challenge social and historical values that we as a society face on a daily basis. His work is an exploration of his mixed ancestry and creates a discourse on we use items of consumer and popular culture to define our personal lineage.

His current body of work examines how we use everyday consumer items and icons of pop culture to define our personal lineage, discussing the use of branding, brand loyalty and technology in conjunction to the ideals of totemic representation and helps educate people on the issues that the First People of North America face.

Sonny grew up in North Delta, a suburb of of Canada’s third largest city and many kilometres away from his ancestral home of Campbell River/ Cape Mudge. It wasn’t until he was eight years old that he discovered his mixed heritage in a rather unique way. It was during a grade three history lesson about a particular group of BC ‘Indians’, the Kwakwaka’wakw. He ran home that day to tell his mom about the lesson, about how he was drawn to the culture and the art: she simply looked at him and said “Well, that is who you are”.

Assu’s work has been featured in several group exhibits over the past years, notably How Soon is Now? at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Comic Relief at the National Gallery of Canada, Challenging Traditions: Contemporary First Nations Art of the Northwest Coast at the McMichael’s Canadian Art Collection and Changing Hands: Art Without Reservation Part 2 at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City. Sonny’s first solo exhibit, Sonny Assu: As Defined Within the Indian Act, was held at the Belkin Satellite Gallery in Vancouver, in April 2006. It garnered him considerable attention and landed him a partnership with the Equinox Gallery in the fall of 2006.

Breakfast Series Cereal boxes, Digitally Printed 12” x 7” x 3” each 2006

Assu’s work has been accepted into the National Gallery in Ottawa (Breakfast Series and the Death Blanket), the Seattle Art Museum (Breakfast Series), the Museum of Anthropology at UBC (Coke-Salish) and in various other public and private collections across Canada and the United States.  His successful art practice has netted exposure on a variety of media platforms and has received grants from various funding bodies in Canada. In 2007, Sonny was honoured with the Emily Award, an Alumni from the Emily Carr University of Art + Design, for his devotion and success on his path as an artist.

His ideas, thoughts and processes are fluidic and ever changing. Ask Sonny what he’s working on and he may eloquently speak about his ideas or he might keep tight-lipped in hopes of creating the element of surprise. Either way, his work and personality will draw you in.  Sonny Assu is Laich-kwil-tach (Kwakwaka’wakw) of the Weka’yi  First Nation (Cape Mudge), the artist has lived in Vancouver since 1999.

CONCERNING CHANGE

Coke-Salish Duratrans and Light box 24” x 35” 2006

My current body of work examines how we use everyday consumer items and icons of pop culture to define our personal lineage. Regardless of race or culture, we use the notion of totemic representation to establish our relation to each other. This body of work juxtaposes two polarized cultures and theorizes how branding, brand loyalty, and items from  pop/technology culture are used to relate to the ideal of totemic representation. The work combines social, economical, and environmental issues with subtle humour to speak to the notion of conformity through consumerism.

Through the iDrum series, specifically the (Red)iscovery series, I was able to formulate a notion of change by how we are manipulated by marketing through media. The series, in general, uses the iconic iPod image, which has stylized to fit within the aesthetics of the First Nations culture from the West Coast of Canada. The work itself lacks the stereotypical narrative elements that you would normally associate with this cultural design style. I’ve removed all notion of traditional narrative to produce an abstracted, modernist approach to “Indian” art.

iDrum (Red)iscovery #3. Acrylic on Cow hide, wood. 20” 2008

The (Red)iscovery series talks about how we as a western society will go out of our way to buy products that pop-rock star Bono tells us to. These (Red) products have been marketed toward our notion of charity towards those less fortunate than ourselves: People who live in the third world, most notably third world African cultures. But what makes me what to challenge Bono’s notion of change through pop-charity, is that we have people living in our own countries that we are ignoring; who are malnourished and who are suffering from the same afflictions that are akin to the third world. Why do we do this? Why are we able to ignore those people who need our help in our own backyard? We walking past them, their hands out, ours filled with a Starbuck’s (Red) cup, “politely” ignoring them through our (Red) branded iPods. I’m not just talking about those who have slipped through the crack or those who “choose” to live on the streets, I’m also talking about the invisible minority of the Native Americans and the First Nations in Canada.

iDrum: Nude Acrylic on Cow hide, wood. 22” 2009

Next door to my grandmother, who lives on a reserve located on Vancouver Island, lays the remains of apathy. A black-mould-condemned double wide trailer sits empty: It’s occupants final left, not able to afford another, now rent off reserve. A stark contrast to her beautifully manicured garden that her nearly 80 year old hands have tended to herself. My family, fortunately, have had a hand in defining our own path of success and rising past the discrimination we still face to this day. We chose to not rely on the hand-out, treating it more like a hand-up. My great grandfather, to whom I see as a man of political and social change, set out to make sure our family would rise above discrimination. But with every door he opened, one shut. He laid a path, to which I travel; opening the closed doors to bring a wider understanding for the change we are seeking.

So in a country as affluent as Canada, we have people living in third would conditions, people who lack in things we take for granted; access to running water, sewage treatment and access to the universal health care we covet as a civilized society. What is happening in Canada, is happening in the USA, Australia, New Zealand: the colonized invisible cultures have been lost to memory in to a  cultural stereotype. We are apathetic to our own people, yet hypocritically help others far from us. It is this hypocrisy that I aim to change with the phrase “How can we help others, when we can’t even help ourselves?”

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST:

http://sonnyassu.com and SEE his latest work on Flickr

Photography by Chris Meier