Untitled (Tobacco Barrel)

2018 - Sculpture (Sculpture)
60.96 x 53.34 x 25.4 cm

First exhibited as part of the recent multidisciplinary project Code Switching and Other Work , at Art Mûr, Berlin in late 2018, Nadia Myre’s Untitled (Tobacco Barrel) takes inspiration from the cylindrical vessels used to import tobacco from North America to Europe during periods of early colonial settlement. Responding to the history of clay pipe production in the ports of London, Bristol, and Glasgow by weaving together the literal detritus of the colonial tobacco trade, Myre’s work poetically untangles material links between the British Empire, Canada, and Indigenous peoples. Following contact with the so-called New World in the 1600s, the growing popularity of tobacco use in Europe led to the design and widespread manufacturing of disposable, pre-stuffed clay tobacco pipes in Britain. An appropriation of the implements traditionally used by Indigenous peoples to smoke dried tobacco leaves, the clay pipe was among the first commodities meant to be discarded post-use, with its stem designed to be broken off in segments as the user consumed the tobacco.

The work of Nadia Myre, member of the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation, is notable for its embrace of cross-cultural mediations as a strategy towards celebrating and reclaiming the far-reaching intellectual and aesthetic contributions of Indigenous communities. Concerned with the specificities of the Anishinabeg as well as pan-Indigenous experiences of loss and resilience and the struggle for healing and reclamation — though not necessarily reconciliation — Myre’s research and material practices examine the languages of power inherent in the mechanisms of museum display formats and their resulting production (and erasure) of knowledge. Reclaiming historical objects and archival documents like the Canadian Federal Government’s Indian Act through re-creation via traditional means such as communal weaving and beading circles, Myre’s artistic work initiates timely discussions regarding Indigenous rights and futures. In wider terms, the artist’s approach also provokes reflection on the role of object-centred scholarship and craft production within visual arts practice, testing the boundaries of how material history and craft are understood and positioned within established, rarefied contexts of artistic display.

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