[Brian Jungen: Printing Two Perspectives]
"City police say they will investigate claims"
"that they used excessive force in arresting a group of Native demonstrators Sunday"
"if a formal complaint is received."
"Amid charges of police violence and halting the protest march, 11..."
This court case with these young Native folks
who had been charged with loitering and stuff,
there's an image of them,
and they're all, like, having a good time,
and they all look pretty cool.
And, on the other side, you have this advertisement for all these white people--
who are models--
and they're having a little, kind of, soccer thing.
Features about this kind of situation of Native folks--
usually, the kind of down-and-out,
the slum conditions of living and stuff--
and then, on the other side, you have almost the complete opposite.
"Why girls leave home: To get married!"
Like this one, for instance,
is about these young Native gals learning how to live in the city--
and learning how to save money and cook for a family--
and really sexist, stereotypical things,
and the other side is an ad for a cooked ham!
[LAUGHS]
So I just took pictures of them with my phone.
I decided to work on this print edition with them.
[JUNGEN] There's one with a ham on the other side.
Did I give you that one?
[MAN] No.
[JUNGEN] Okay.
Huh.
[MAN] Now you're a printmaker.
[BOTH LAUGH]
[JUNGEN] I'll put you out of work.
It was interesting seeing the media's portrayal of the local Native population.
It was always about inequality,
but it wasn't really from the Native person's perspective.
In the Seventies, things kind of changed,
and they kind of started to report more positive things.
I was doing research for this public art project in Calgary
and I went to the museum and I asked them if they could
gather history of the local First Nations community.
And they had a clippings file.
Those broad sheet newspapers were huge!
It was like they were folding a bedsheet, but it was a newspaper!
[LAUGHS]
How hard would it be to print on the other side of the paper?
Pretty hard?
[MAN] No, we just have to figure out how.
[BOTH LAUGH]
These are the stories I would have read as a kid.
They would've made me feel really bad about being Native.
And I think that's the case with a lot of folks.
In mass media, you're always portrayed in either
a sympathetic or a very negative way.
[JUNGEN] Wow!
[WOMAN] That's great!
Look at that!
[JUNGEN] So that's without the printing?
[MAN] That's just the background, yeah.
Because we separated that out.
Actually, it's a shadow.
[JUNGEN] The shadow! [LAUGHS]
[MAN] The folds and everything.
[JUNGEN] Oh, okay.
Looks great!
[MAN] Looks cool, eh?
[JUNGEN] Yeah.
[MAN] I like it floating in the middle of nowhere.
We just have to hit it with a rag to clean the edges off.
[JUNGEN] Yeah.
[MAN] And even the text lines up with the crease.
[JUNGEN] Yeah.
Can I handle it?
[MAN] Yeah, it's yours!
[JUNGEN LAUGHS]
[JUNGEN] In the Arctic, there's a lot of Inuit artists
who've done a lot of beautiful printmaking.
And I got interested in printmaking largely out of that Inuit art tradition.
One thing I always liked about the imagery that you see
in the cultures on the coast
is this bilateral symmetry--
trying to portray both sides of something on a flat surface.
There's something that you would have a physical relationship to.
Like, you wouldn't just frame these newspaper clippings
and stick it on the wall.
That's not how it works.
It's something that you actually have to turn over.