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Proposal for the Hart House Centennial Commission: Rebecca Belmore with Osvaldo Yero

Rebecca Belmore with Osvaldo Yero
Adoopoowiningemuh Wasbadizo (seeing yourself at the table)
Digital rendering; stainless steel plate polished to a mirror finish, aluminum hanging structure

For its centennial celebrations in 2019, Hart House commissioned a major, permanent artwork by an Indigenous artist to transform its historic Great Hall. One step towards redressing settler colonial narratives, this permanent commission seeks to acknowledge the history, narratives and people who came before us, honour the land upon which we live and work today, and imagine other possible futures for current and future generations from an Indigenous perspective.

Learn more about Re-Imagining Place: Hart House Centennial Art Commission.


About the Artists
Rebecca Belmore is a multi-disciplinary Anishnaabe artist from Lac Seul First Nation and currently living in Toronto. She is internationally recognized for her installations, sculpture, photo-based, and performance works, which often concentrate on land politics, issues of identity, and systemic violence against Indigenous people. In 2018, Belmore presented her largest solo exhibition to-date, Facing the Monumental, at the Art Gallery of Ontario. In 2017, Belmore participated in the prestigious documenta 14 exhibition held concurrently in Kassel, Germany, and Athens, Greece, where she showcased her major sculptural work, Biinjiya’iing Onji (From Inside). She received the Gershon Iskowitz Prize in 2016, and was the first Anishnaabe artist to represent Canada at the Venice Biennale in 2005. Belmore was recognized for her achievements with an honorary doctorate in 2005 from the Ontario College of Art and Design University, and from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2018.

Osvaldo Yero immigrated to Canada in 1997 and currently lives in Toronto, where he works in sculpture and installation. Yero’s artistic practice is concerned with his experience as part of the growing diaspora of Cuba. Politically and socially charged, his work contends with issues of national identity and plays with the boundaries of kitsch and high art. His solo exhibitions include Passage at Access Gallery, Vancouver (2010); Loop at galeria 23 y 12, Havana, Cuba (2008); and Landmark at the Belkin Satellite, Vancouver (2002). Yero has been included in international group exhibitions, including Nuit Blanche in Toronto (2006) and Contemporary Art From Cuba: Irony and Survival on the Utopian Island at Arizona State University (2001). His work is in the permanent collections of Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba; Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff; and Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen, Germany.