Now until Oct. 21, TD is helping make Rebecca Belmore (an interdisciplinary Anishinabekwe artist)’s work/story accessible to the public. TD is showcasing a video of her work on the art of media wall at the TD Bay and Queen branch and supporting an exhibit at the AGO in parallel.

TD Art has a new collecting stream: New Media. This is how many artists are responding to important topics and issues of our time. Film, moving image, animation and the ability to weave a narrative through beauty and timely concepts. Rebecca Belmore’s piece is an inaugural piece of this new arm of the collection.

Why Rebecca Belmore:

From TD curator Stuart Keeler: As a curator, I have followed her work for many years, and sought to work with her several times. Everything just kind of settled on the new video commission. It is a great piece for the TD Art Collection and our NEW – New Media collecting stream. This was a major opportunity to amplify the voice of Belmore as relevant, timely and of this moment in our contemporary culture.

About Rebecca Belmore’s art piece, titled “Nibi”

The video address the experience of water. Nibi in Anishnaabe means water. The video is a performance as much as it is a historical document of this time. The artist uses her body and colour fabric to remind of us of so much. But, at first we are brought in by the beauty and magic of the image. When we look closer and think about the role of water…in this work the fabric almost becomes a stand in for the body. Or our environment.

Mother Earth, cleaning the environment. Red yellow blue – primary colours when mixed together create green. Water as a connector, healing source, vital for life existence. It also allows us to rethink the role that water has had in colonization of Canada.  Red, Yelllow, Blue fabric is submerged by the artist’s hand in the video. The colours remind me of the ability of water and its strength, its ability to heal and also to clean and render new.