Brian Jungen facts for kids

Brian Jungen (born April 29, 1970) is a famous artist from Fort St. John, British Columbia. He has both Dane-zaa (an Indigenous nation) and Swiss family roots. Brian Jungen lives and works in the North Okanagan area of British Columbia.

He uses many different materials to create his art. Brian Jungen is known as a leading artist among a new group from Vancouver. His art often explores ideas about Indigenous identity and culture. However, he also has many other interests and themes in his work. He shows that Indigenous artists can create art about anything, not just their heritage. His artworks are poetic and hard to put into one category.

About Brian Jungen

Brian Jungen's father was an immigrant from Switzerland. He met Brian's mother, who was from the Dane-zaa nation, in British Columbia. They got married in the 1960s. Because of a government rule called the Indian Act, his mother lost her official Indigenous status and rights. This rule said that status could only be passed down from the father.

Brian Jungen was born in 1970 and grew up in Fort St. John, a remote logging town. He enjoyed visual art in public school. Sadly, his parents died in a fire, and his aunt raised him. Jungen later moved to Vancouver for college. He graduated from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 1992. After that, he studied art history at Concordia University in Montreal. He then moved to New York in 1993 and became friends with artist Nicole Eisenmann. Later, he returned to Vancouver.

Early Artworks

In 1997, Brian Jungen was part of a group art show called Buddy Place. He created wall drawings that looked at common ideas about Indigenous people in British Columbia. He asked people on the street to draw what they thought "native art" was. Then, he turned these drawings into large wall art.

In 1999, Jungen had his own show. He displayed more wall drawings and his famous series, Prototypes for New Understanding (1998-2005). This exhibition got a lot of attention from art critics and experts. The Vancouver Art Gallery bought some of his sculptures, which showed how important his work was.

Prototype for New Understanding #8, 1999
Nike athletic footwear, human hair

For Prototypes for New Understanding, Jungen took apart Nike Air Jordan sneakers. He then put them back together to look like traditional masks from the Northwest Coast Indigenous cultures. These sculptures cleverly compared how people desire Western products with how they sometimes view Indigenous cultures as exotic or "other."

In 2000, Jungen had another solo show where he displayed Shapeshifter. This was the first of three whale skeletons he built. He made them from white plastic lawn chairs and hung them in the gallery. They looked like real skeletons you might see in a natural history museum. This 30-foot-long sculpture made people think about museums, natural resources, and global trade. Jungen also saw a link between a whale kept in a museum and how Indigenous people are sometimes treated. He felt both are seen as special but also separated from their natural place.

Awards and Later Works

In 2002, Brian Jungen won the first-ever $50,000 Sobey Art Award. In 2004, he created Court for an exhibition in New York. This was a life-size copy of a basketball court. He made it from tables used in sweatshops (factories with poor working conditions). This artwork highlighted issues like global trade, unfair labor, and the obsession with sports.

In 2005, a special exhibition of his work traveled to New York, the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. Brian Jungen became famous very quickly around the world. This meant he had to travel a lot. Because of this, he started spending more time each year "up north" with the Doig River First Nation.

His exhibition in 2010-2011 included raw animal hides. He got these hides during his visits up north, where he started hunting again with his relatives. Jungen used these hides in many ways. He made prints from them and stretched them over car parts and modern furniture. He even made some of his own drums this way. One artwork, Tomorrow Repeated (2011), was a moose hide stretched over green car fenders. It sat on top of a white freezer. Jungen explained that in the reserve, people have freezers, car parts, and animal parts everywhere.

In 2012, Jungen worked with artist Duane Linklater on a film called Modest Livelihood. This hour-long film quietly shows the two artists on a hunting trip in Northern British Columbia. The film's title refers to a 1999 court decision. It confirmed First Nations' hunting and fishing rights but said they were limited to earning a "moderate livelihood." The film was shown at Documenta 13 in Germany, a big art event. Jungen also created a dog park for Documenta 13. It had sculptures that worked as tunnels and platforms for pets, and benches for their owners. A local dog school even used the park for training sessions. Also in 2012, Jungen's Prototypes for New Understanding and one of his whale skeletons, Cetology, were shown at the Shanghai Biennale.

In 2016, Jungen had shows where he returned to using Nike sneakers. These new sculptures were different. They were more open and abstract. They showed a strong modern style and a deep understanding of materials. These new shoe artworks were less about direct images. Instead, they hinted at animal and human faces. They challenged people who expected to see his famous masks.

Couch Monster: Sadzěʔ yaaghęhch'ill, 2022. Bronze.

In 2022, the Art Gallery of Ontario revealed a new public artwork by Jungen. It is called Couch Monster: Sadzěʔ yaaghęhch’ill. The Dane-zaa part of the title means "my heart is ripping." Jungen was inspired by the famous elephant, Jumbo. He wanted to show that sometimes there is cruelty in entertainment and art. This large bronze sculpture is in downtown Toronto. It is Jungen's first artwork made of bronze. The Couch Monster can seem both playful and sad. It is made from pieces of couch materials and has different textures. You are even allowed to touch it.

Art Themes

Throughout his career, Brian Jungen has made art that explores many different ideas. His works can be understood in multiple ways. They avoid being simply labeled by race or culture. Jungen's art connects his First Nations background with Western art history and the global economy. His famous Prototypes for New Understanding series gave clues that linked global trade, Nike factories, and Canada's history of colonialism. Several themes appear often in his work. These include how museums display things, buying and selling goods, identity, and animals.

Museums and Display

From his early Prototypes for New Understanding (shown in clear display cases) to his newer sculptures (using freezers as stands), how his art is displayed is very important. In Canada, the Indian Act of 1876 banned Potlatches, which were important Indigenous ceremonies. The government took many cultural items like masks and blankets from these ceremonies. These items were then displayed in museums. Jungen said, "a lot of my exposure to my ancestry is through museums."

Jungen understood how museums used display to control the story of Indigenous culture. They made Indigenous culture seem like something from the past, which helped keep colonial power. Jungen noticed that Nike stores also displayed sneakers in glass cases. He combined these ideas in his Prototypes for New Understanding. He showed his Nike masks, which looked like Northwest Coast masks, "as if they were anthropological artifacts." This showed how both sneakers and Indigenous items are made special by being displayed in a certain way.

Jungen also used the idea of museums in his sculpture Shapeshifter (2000). He turned plastic lawn chairs into a whale skeleton and hung it. It looked like something you would see in a natural history museum. He felt that displaying whales in museums is similar to how Indigenous people are sometimes seen as special but also separated from their true lives. His sculptures show how the way something is displayed can change its meaning and value.

Buying, Selling, and Global Trade

Brian Jungen often uses everyday products in his art. He also uses "raw materials of economic production" to talk about buying, selling, and global trade. In 2001, Jungen made Untitled. It was a stack of wooden pallets, like those found at a loading dock. But if you looked closely, you saw that Jungen had carefully handcrafted them from red cedar. Red cedar is a wood often used by Northwest Coast Indigenous carvers.

Pallets are used to move goods around the world, so they represent global trade. But Jungen's pallets became special, handmade art pieces. This is almost the opposite of Nike sneakers. Sneakers are made in factories with poor conditions, but the market makes them seem very desirable.

In 2004, Jungen created Court, a huge sculpture. He used 231 wooden sewing tables from sweatshops. He arranged them to make a life-size basketball court. The court had hundreds of holes where sewing machines would have been. This artwork made a connection between rich athletes who play on such courts and the poor workers who make their shoes. Jungen's work often explores the unfair conditions of global trade.

Jungen is interested in everyday items. He often changes things like baseball bats, chairs, shoes, and gas cans into sculptures. He likes using "things people can recognize and that they see around them everyday." His most famous series, Prototypes for New Understanding, explores the link between money value and cultural value. Nike shoes have money value, while the Northwest Coast masks Jungen's sculptures look like have cultural value. Jungen's art shows how shoes are bought and sold, and how Indigenous art has also been treated like a product. He shows how people have turned Indigenous heritage into something to buy and sell.

His 2011 sculpture Tomorrow Repeated also explores this. It takes a car, which is a very desired product, and stretches a moose hide over it. This sculpture again shows Jungen exploring the space between products and culture. It combines the desire for Indigenous images with the desire for cars.

Identity and Culture

Brian Jungen's own background, being Dane-zaa and living in Canada, has inspired much of his art. He often works "between native and white cultures." Jungen's art questions common ideas about Indigenous culture. It also looks at how people try to make Indigenous art fit into mainstream culture. Jungen said he was interested in how Indigenous designs are everywhere, especially in Vancouver. He noticed how they have been changed and used for business.

Jungen's art often challenges these common ideas. He sometimes uses images from Indigenous nations that are not his own. For example, his Prototypes for New Understanding look like masks from coastal BC nations like the Haida and Kwakwaka'wakw. Jungen is from the Dane-zaa nation, which is inland. By using coastal designs, he shows how Indigenous coastal images have been taken by others and linked to the whole province.

Jungen also points out how a general "Indigenous" identity is created, ignoring differences between nations. He made Furniture Sculpture (2006), a Teepee built from leather stripped off sofas. Teepees have become a general symbol for "Indianness," but they are actually specific to Plains nations. Jungen's teepee made one writer ask why he was building a teepee if not to challenge ideas about his background.

In British Columbia, images of Northwest Coast First Nations have been used for business. They have become part of the province's brand, like "supernatural British Columbia." Indigenous images have become deeply ingrained in public awareness. Jungen explored this "predictability" in some of his 2016 sculptures. These new Nike sneaker sculptures are more abstract. They hint at masks or animals but are mostly unrecognizable. These new artworks refuse to meet people's expectations of seeing masks. They challenge our "desire for meaning." Since people often want to understand and fit Indigenous culture into their own ideas, these new sculptures reject stereotypes of Indigenous images. They make people think about their own desire to understand.

Animals in Art

Animals appear often in Brian Jungen's work. Sometimes they are the main subject, like his whale skeleton in Shapeshifter (2000). It is made only of plastic chairs, but it looks like a real sculpture! Sometimes animals are the material he uses, both living and not. He uses different animal hides. He also used live animals, like cats, in Habitat 04: Cite radieuse des chats/ Cats radiant city (2004).

Habitat 04: Cite radieuse des chats/ Cats radiant city was a temporary home for homeless cats. Jungen built it to look like the famous "Habitat" building in Montreal. Jungen's interest in animals often leads to questions about pets and the places built for animals, like aquariums or zoos. For his 2005 project Inside Today's Home, Jungen used materials from IKEA. He created an "indoor aviary" for six small birds called zebra finches. To avoid disturbing the birds, viewers could only see them through small peepholes in the gallery walls. This made people think about how we watch animals. Jungen sees a link between how people watch captive animals and how they look at Indigenous cultural items.

How Brian Jungen Creates Art

Brian Jungen's art is inspired by "found object" art. This is a style used by artists like Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp. Instead of just showing objects as they are, Jungen often changes them. But he doesn't completely hide what they were originally. For example, his Prototypes of New Understanding series uses parts of Nike Air Jordan shoes. He puts them together and sews them by hand to make masks. Jungen said it was interesting to see how changing the shoes could make people think of specific cultures. It also showed how culture can be changed or taken over. He felt the Nike mask sculptures showed a strange connection between a product you buy and a real Indigenous artifact.

The Nike shoes Jungen used already had colors like red and black, which are common in traditional First Nations artwork. Other projects, like his wooden pallets, were carefully made from red cedar. He also made a First Nations tent from "11 leather couches." His large "whale-bone" sculptures were made from plastic chairs, some still with price stickers on them. These works make even people unfamiliar with First Nations themes see familiar objects in new ways.

Some of Jungen's projects are more political. For example, in "Isolated Depiction of the Passage of Time," he used plastic food trays. The colors of the trays matched statistics about jail sentences given to First Nations people. Inside the sculpture, there was a hidden television and DVD player. It quietly played the movie The Great Escape.

In 2004, he took part in a big art show in Korea. His work was also shown at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2006. Later that year, he had an exhibition at the Tate Modern in London. In 2008, he showed his artwork Crux at the Sydney Biennale.

Brian Jungen was the first living Native American artist to have an exhibition at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in Washington, D.C.. His exhibition, "Strange Comfort," was on display from October 2009 to August 2010. Jungen won the 2010 Iskowitz Prize for visual arts.

In 2011, Jungen revealed three public sculptures at the Banff Centre. They were called The ghosts on top of my head. These were white steel benches shaped like antlers from elk, moose, and caribou.

His sculpture called Carapace was inspired by Jules Verne's stories of giant animals. It was shown in the Loire Valley, where Jules Verne was from. It was also shown at the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton in 2011. Jungen grew up in a remote community, and he believes this helped him be creative.

Major Collections

Brian Jungen's art is part of the National Gallery of Canada's permanent collection. His sculpture Shapeshifter (2000) was bought in 2001. Star/Pointro (2011) was bought in 2011. Court (2004) was bought in 2012, and People's Flag (2006) in 2014.