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Aylan Couchie
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Aylan Couchie’s first large-scale public art commission soars 70 feet from its permanent perch overlooking the city of Barrie, Ontario as a tribute to the area’s three first nations. An Anishinaabe sculptor, much of Couchie’s work looks to insert Indigenous presence back into the Canadian landscape.

 

Her primary focus at OCAD U as an MFA student in the Interdisciplinary Master’s in Art, Media and Design program, was on Indigenous monuments and commemoration as written into the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 Calls to Action. “I am looking at ways in which sites of commemoration can be actioned from an Indigenous perspective,” she says. “This investigation looks to remove the colonial aspects of monuments, especially when they are placed as a reflection of colonial deeds, such as residential schools. It’s about centering and acknowledging Indigenous people and ways of being, versus erasing them with yet another colonial form.”

Couchie, whose multimedia installations juxtapose materials to create a dialogue and further narratives, says she enjoyed the open studio and collegial atmosphere of her program at OCAD U. “Everyone was supportive of each other, both personally and academically,” she says.

 

Couchie, who is from Nipissing First Nation in Northern Ontario and also studied at NSCAD in Halifax where she earned her BFA, has a long resume of exhibitions. She’s shown her work in galleries across Ontario, internationally in Ireland and Serbia and stateside in Chicago and New Jersey, since 2012. In 2015 she won the Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award from the International Sculpture Centre as well as the inaugural Barbara Laronde Award from Native Women in the Arts. In 2016 she was a recipient of the Ontario Premier’s Award in the recent graduate category, and received a Delaney Scholarship to attend OCAD U. As part of the IAMD program she worked with world-renowned artist Isaac Julien in the Jack Weinbaum Family Foundation Global Experience Project.

She plans to work towards a PhD so she can teach as well as create art: “There is a very real need for more Indigenous representation within studio and academic spaces to allow younger Indigenous students to feel they can make work within a supported structure. I hope tone day be part of that structure.”

 

Find out more: https://aylan-couchie.com

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