Douglas Cardinal's exhibit of Turtle Island's finest architects coming to Edmonton

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World-renowned architect Douglas Cardinal was in Edmonton Friday to announce an upcoming exhibition shining the spotlight on Indigenous architecture.

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Just ahead of Canada’s inaugural Day of Truth and Reconciliation, the Alberta-born Cardinal made the announcement in the newly restored Pendennis Building at 9666 Jasper Ave., now Métis-owned by Lorraine Bodnarek and Ed Cyrankiewicz.

Unceded: Voices of the Land is slated to open in this reclaimed space in March, sponsored by RoadShowz, a new urban retail concept supporting Indigenous initiatives, which has brought Cardinal onboard as a consultant.

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First unveiled at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale — the most prestigious architectural exhibit in the world — Unceded: Voices of the Land showcases the work of 18 Indigenous architects and tells their story through an immersive, multimedia installation.

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The candy colours of the northern lights are projected in geometric patterns that dance around the exhibit space and screens embedded in dedicated walls. Images of the beautiful buildings these architects are responsible for are interspersed by scenes of mossy forests and salmon running up rivers superimposed with undulating gridlines to demonstrate how these natural elements have been interpreted and translated into a representative form. Flutes like bird songs and gentle, rhythmic drumming like a soft and steady rain complete the story of our connection to the natural environment and the message delivered by these works.

“Stories invented us so they could be carried through the universe,” said Lewis Cardinal, Edmonton co-lead for Unceded YEG, who addressed Friday’s audience. “When you see yourself in someone else’s story, that is when we being to build relationships.”

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Stories and relationships, with each other and the environment, are shared values that inform the work of these architects.

They first banded together to submit to the Canada Council for the Arts to represent Canada at the Venice Biennale, and asked Cardinal to be their lead presenter. These artists work across Canada and the United States, known as Turtle Island to Indigenous cultures, “because our people did not have borders,” Cardinal explained.

From Venice, the exhibition moved to the Canadian Museum of History, a building Pierre Elliott Trudeau commissioned Cardinal to design in 1989. Facing parliament along the banks of the Ottawa River, the museum’s curvilinear exterior echoes the flowing river, exemplifying Cardinal’s work that embraces our natural environment. It closed there in February of this year, and Edmonton is the installation’s next destination. Cardinal said it would continue on to New York, Portland, Oregon and California in the years to come.

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Born in Alberta in 1934 of Métis decent, Cardinal’s name may not be immediately recognizable, but his organic buildings are a part of our local fabric. He built the Telus World of Science and St. Albert Place, which houses the city’s government while also acting as an arts and culture destination.

“Using the soft power of love is stronger than the hard power of force,” Cardinal stated, a message passed to him from Elders who have always informed his work.

It’s a lesson Cardinal also puts out to the world in these trying times, insisting we’ll only succeed if we “treat the earth and each other with a lot of love and caring.

“We have to come from our hearts in whatever we do.”

jfeniak@postmedia.com