Exhibitions

Christian Chapman: Run to the Hills!

September 17 - December 17, 2023

Christian Chapman, "Wisdom" (2011), acrylic and oil on gesso paper. Indigenous Art Collection, Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada. Photo by Lawrence Cook.

For Chapman, these stories are treasures, sources of inspiration and influence that travel with him into the shifting imaginary of Anishinaabe storytelling.

Christian Chapman, an Anishinaabe artist from Fort William First Nation in Ontario, has always cherished and attended to stories, admiring their depth, elusiveness, the ways they carry meaning, and how storytellers in his family — young and old — could uniquely animate their being. These stories warmly anchored him in Anishinaabe traditions from the north shore of Lake Superior, stretching back to times before his own. He would listen, carefully attentive, beaming with his own curiosity. For Chapman, these stories are treasures, sources of inspiration and influence that travel with him into the shifting imaginary of Anishinaabe storytelling.

Run to the Hills! spotlights Chapman’s gift as a storyteller who, like relatives before him, finds his own way of being in conversation with ancestral oral traditions. Using painting, printmaking, and other mixed media techniques, he forms a new graphic language for narrative expression that still carries old-timey sensibilities.

In his work, you’ll find elements of Anishinaabeg humour in the mundane and small moments of daily life, alongside the deeper political undercurrents that tug at its edges. This situates his practice in a new liminal zone where identities merge, and stories intersect—sometimes grounded in Anishinaabe Aki, other times wandering in from the magical world of Disney. He experiments with text, image, and visual juxtapositions, sometimes offering up pointed themes, other times leaving space for more to be imagined.

Through these playful encounters, he builds a new arbour for Indigenous audiences, a space where the subtle humour of Indigenous experience and familiar symbols of popular culture coexist seamlessly. Viewers are gently invited into this realm, which opens with sharp yet recognizable crossings, showing how the lines between these connected worlds are always changing.

Chapman draws on the styles of visual art icons, Woodland School, Mishomis Norval Morrisseau and the American Pop artist Andy Warhol, bending them through his own unique lens. With profound affection for Anishinaabe story forms from where the North Shore sleeps, his reinterpretations are brave, inventive and cheeky. Bounded perpetually to every storyteller in his family preceding him. By bringing in belly laughs, mischief, and critical analysis, Chapman keeps the Woodland style’s pull alive for the next wave of Anishinaabe makers.

The exhibit’s name, Run to the Hills! nods to Iron Maiden’s hit track and references Chapman’s 2017 print, Fight for Your Life. The song, widely known and belted outby Native uncles across Turtle Island, serves as a rallying cry for Indigenous empowerment and grit. Chapman harnesses these forces throughout his practice, honouring the timeless defiance that lives on across generations — much like old stories — while always leaving room for laughter to sneak in.

Thank you / Miigwetch! CUAG gratefully acknowledges the many lenders whose generosity has made this exhibition possible: the Indigenous Art Collection at Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, the Government of Ontario Art Collection, the Archives of Ontario, Howard Adler, Barry Ace and Earl Truelove, Blake Angeconeb, Rawlson King and Linda Grussani, Bill Staubi and Bear Witness.