Tahltan
Peter Morin – 2019
As a grandson of Tahltan ancestor artists, the artist has lived away from his home territory for most of his life, but like his ancestors who have walked on the land, he carries Tahltan ideas with him wherever he is. Every step along the way, Tahltan knowledge has guided the researching, dreaming, learning, making of the past twenty years of his artistic practice.
Tahltan artist Peter Morin has been walking around all over Canada in the tradition of his people. When you walk on the land, you have to carry the things that aide your survival. Ideas enable your survival. Morin has been walking and visiting Indigenous territories and carrying his idea of what Tahltan means. This idea, inherited and informed by practice, gives a shape to a body, and a body of artwork. As a grandson of Tahltan ancestor artists, the artist has lived away from his home territory for most of his life, but like his ancestors who have walked on the land, he carries Tahltan ideas with him wherever he is. Every step along the way, Tahltan knowledge has guided the researching, dreaming, learning, making of the past twenty years of his artistic practice.
Morin began art school in 1997, completing his Bachelor of Fine Arts at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver in 2001. In 2010, he completed his Masters of Fine Arts at the University of British Columbia-Okanagan. Initially trained in lithography, Morin’s artistic practice has moved from printmaking to poetry to installation to performance art. This exhibition Tahltan features key artworks with Tahltan content created over the past twenty years of Morin’s artistic career. Peter is the son of Janelle Morin (Crow Clan) and Pierre Morin (Quebecois) and the grandson of Dinah Creyke and John Creyke (Crow Clan and Wolf Clan, respectively). Peter was given the Tahltan name Ezeck-Tah by his grandmother Dinah Creyke when he turned 13. In this exhibition, Morin has focused on his matrilineal inheritances in homage to the matriarchal structuring of the Tahltan Nation.
The Tahltan Nation is currently comprised of three communities located in British Columbia: Iskut, Dease Lake, and Telegraph Creek. The Tahltan Nation territory is 3857. 06 KM from Toronto, Ontario. Tahltan leaders signed a Declaration of Independence from canada on October 18, 1910. This document declares Tahltan sovereignty and foregrounds Tahltan political, philosophical, economic, and future thought as determined by/for Tahltan people.
About the Artist
Peter Morin—
Peter Morin is a Tahltan Nation artist and curator. Throughout his artistic practice, Morin investigates the impact zones that occur when Indigenous practices collide with Western-settler colonialism. Morin’s artworks are shaped, and reshaped, by Tahltan epistemological production and often take on the form of performance interventions.
Morin’s practice has spanned twenty years so far, with exhibitions in London, Berlin, Singapore, and New Zealand, as well as across Canada and the United States. In addition to his exhibition history, Morin has curated exhibitions for the Museum of Anthropology, Western Front, Bill Reid Gallery, and Burnaby Art Gallery. He was longlisted for the Brink and Sobey Awards, in 2013 and 2014, respectively. In 2016, Morin received the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Outstanding Achievement by a Canadian Mid-Career Artist. He holds a SSRHRC grant, Crossing media, Crossing Canada: performing the land we are, which explores the meeting up of media and durational performance. Morin currently holds a tenured appointment in the Faculty of Arts at the Ontario College of Art and Design University in Toronto.