Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun facts for kids

Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun is a talented contemporary artist from Canada. He is a member of the Cowichan Tribes and Syilx First Nations. His paintings mix traditional Northwest Coast design with a style called Surrealism. Through his art, he explores important topics like protecting the environment, land ownership, and how Canada has treated First Nations people.

Early Life and Influences

Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun was born in Kamloops, British Columbia in 1957. He grew up in both Kamloops and Richmond, British Columbia. His father, Benjamin Raphael Paul, was from the Cowichan Tribes, a Coast Salish First Nation. His mother, Evelyn Paul, was Syilx, part of the Okanagan Nation Alliance.

Lawrence attended the Kamloops Indian Residential School for a few years. His father worked there as a teacher. Later, his family moved to Richmond, where he went to public school.

Growing up, Lawrence learned a lot about the challenges faced by Aboriginal peoples. His family was very active in politics. His father was a leader in groups like the North American Indian Brotherhood and helped start the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs. His mother was also involved in these groups. Lawrence often went to meetings with his parents.

Even though he was first encouraged to go into politics, Lawrence chose art. His paintings, drawings, and sculptures became his way to speak out. He shares his concerns about land claims, harmful government policies, and damage to the environment. He believes an artist must "watch, observe, and participate in what's going on." He sees his art as a way to "record" these important issues.

Lawrence also kept strong ties to Coast Salish cultural traditions. When he was fourteen, he earned the right to dance with the X̱wáýx̱way mask. At seventeen, he became a Black Face dancer. His name, Yuxweluptun, means "man of many masks." The Sxwaixwe Society gave him this name when he was a teenager.

He studied art at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design (now University). He graduated in 1983 with an honors degree in painting.

Art Style and Meaning

Yuxweluptun mainly creates paintings, but he also makes multimedia and sculptural art. Many of his pieces use elements of Surrealism. This art style often shows dream-like or strange images. For Yuxweluptun, Surrealism helps him "truth-tell and heal." His work sometimes reminds people of the melting objects in paintings by Spanish artist Salvador Dalí.

His art also includes traditional elements from Northwest First Nations art. You can see shapes like ovoids and special lines called formlines. He also includes ideas from Canadian landscape painting, like the style of the Group of Seven.

Environmental issues are a big part of Yuxweluptun's art. His paintings often have strong political messages. They highlight problems with land use and who owns the land. His art is often described as "provocative," meaning it makes people think. For example, his multimedia piece Residential School Dirty Laundry uses children's underwear and red paint. It represents the difficult experiences of First Nations children in the Canadian Indian residential school system.

Yuxweluptun is known for being one of the most direct artists in Canada today. He isn't afraid to show the tough realities that many Native people face. He does this by mixing Northwest Coast art styles with the dream-like look of Surrealism. This mix of styles was new and sometimes debated when he first started. But for Yuxweluptun, using a more general Northwest Coast style helps him show what he calls "the imaginary Indian" or "the symbolic Native." This means the figures in his paintings are not always real people or specific ceremonies. Instead, they comment on how Native identity is often seen by others.

One important thing about Yuxweluptun's paintings is how he brings politics into landscape art. His art shows harsh realities like forests destroyed by clear-cutting and water filled with pollution. He also shows figures of bureaucracy and the struggles of poverty. These images are like stunning, colorful nightmares that are hard to ignore. His work helps change how Native arts are seen within Canadian modern art.

Famous Artworks

Inherent Rights, Vision Rights

Inherent Rights, Vision Rights was one of the first Virtual Reality (VR) artworks ever made in Canada. It was created between 1991 and 1993. To experience it, you didn't wear a helmet. Instead, you entered a special booth, like an old-fashioned stereoscope. Inside, you would hear 3D sounds and see computer graphics. The booth looked like a Longhouse, which is a traditional First Nations building. Inside, you would see animal spirits and ghosts that looked like they came from Yuxweluptun's paintings. This artwork was even shown at the National Gallery of Canada in 1992.

Haida Hot Dog

Haida Hot Dog is an earlier piece from 1984. It uses a pop-art style. In this work, Yuxweluptun comments on how First Nations art, especially Haida art, was sometimes treated like a simple product to be sold.

Scorched Earth, Clear-cut Logging on Native Sovereign Land

This painting, made in 1991, shows a strong political message. It was one of the first works bought by the National Gallery of Canada from an exhibition called Land, Spirit, Power: First Nations at the National Gallery of Canada. The painting combines many influences: the history of Indigenous peoples, Coast Salish beliefs, Northwest Coast art, and Western landscape art.

In 1992, Yuxweluptun explained his work: "My work is very different from traditional art work. How do you paint a land claim? You can't carve a totem pole that has a beer bottle on it ... I paint this for what it is – a very toxic land base. This is what my ancestral motherland is becoming. Painting is a form of political activism, a way to exercise my inherent right, my right to authority, my freedom ... I can speak out in my paintings even without the recognition of self-government."

Awards and Honours

• 1998 Yuxweluptun received the Vancouver Institute for the Visual Arts (VIVA) award.
• 2013 Yuxweluptun was given a fellowship at the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis.
• 2019 Yuxweluptun received an Honorary doctorate from Emily Carr University.

Exhibitions

Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun's art has been shown in many group and solo exhibitions around the world.

He was included in INDIGENA: Contemporary Native Perspectives in 1992 and 1993. This was a big traveling exhibition of Indigenous art. Yuxweluptun was the only artist featured in both INDIGENA and Land, Spirit, Power: First Nations at the National Gallery of Canada. These two exhibitions were very important. They helped bring national attention to Aboriginal art and introduced many new Aboriginal artists.

In 1993, the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery in Vancouver opened its new space with an exhibition of Yuxweluptun's work. This show, called Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun: Born to Live and Die on Your Colonialist Reservations, was his first major career overview. It showed how important his work is in Canadian landscape painting because it challenged many traditional ideas.

Yuxweluptun's work was also part of 75 Years of Collecting at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2006. This exhibition celebrated the gallery's 75th anniversary.

The Western Front presented Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun from March 7 to April 4, 2009. This exhibition featured one painting, Guardian Spirits on the Land: Ceremony of Sovereignty (2000), alongside science fiction novels.

Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun: Neo-Native Drawings and Other Works was shown at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver from March 19 to May 16, 2010. This exhibit showed three decades of his drawings, including tree studies, portraits, and etchings.

His work was also in Shore, Forest and Beyond: Art From the Audain Collection, at the Vancouver Art Gallery from October 29, 2011 to January 29, 2012.

Yuxweluptun's art was part of Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art, a special exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada. This show, from May 17 to September 2, 2013, was the largest global survey of contemporary Indigenous art at the time.

Unceded Territories, a solo exhibition, was held at the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) at the University of British Columbia in 2016.

Other exhibitions include:

• Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun: Time Immemorial (You're Just Mad Because We Got Here First), Galerie Canada Gallery, London, United Kingdom, 2017.
• Colour Zone, Plug In ICA, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 2009.
• An Indian Act: Shooting the Indian Act, Locus+, Newcastle, UK, 1997.
• Inherent Rights, Vision Rights: Virtual Reality Paintings and Drawings, Canadian Embassy, Paris, 1993.
• True North: The Landscape Tradition in Contemporary Canadian Art, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei, Taiwan.
• New Territories: 350/500 Years After, Montreal, Quebec (touring).
• In the Shadow of the Sun, Canadian Museum of Civilization, Hull, Quebec, 1988.
• The Warehouse Show, Vancouver, British Columbia, 1983.