MULLYANNE NÎMITO 

CHEYENNE RAIN LEGRANDE  ᑭᒥᐊᐧᐣ

grunt gallery, Vancouver, BC

September 17 – October 29, 2022

 

REVIEW BY MERCEDES ENG

 

 

 

I want to live inside the elemental pink confection, “Mullyanne Nîmito”—Cheyenne Rain LeGrande’s solo exhibition at grunt gallery last fall. The exhibition’s title comes from the familial nickname “Mullyanne” that both LeGrande and her mother—known for their fashion style—were given after a Nêhiyaw elder in the community, who LeGrande said, would “Natohksisot—dress in all kinds of ways.” The centrality of fashion and style is in full effect in the exhibition. 

 

 

Upon entry, the viewer is immersed in a room of candy-pink walls covered with lavender Cree syllabics, then greeted by a bepsi tab shawl, which I immediately reached for, as if to touch it, because I was drawn to its colour palette and texture. The shawl is a contemporary pop version of a traditional “Fancy Dance shawl commonly worn by powwow dancers,” Justin Ducharme says in the exhibition’s catalogue. It is composed of hundreds of brushed aluminum pop and beer can tabs woven together with satiny pastel ribbons of orange, pink, purple, and blue that hang in a long fringe. 

 

 

I wanted to ornament myself with the shawl, stroke the fringe, twirl around, and try on the four-inch platform animal-hide moccasins displayed adjacent to the shawl. Inscribed on the moccasin platforms’ bases are Cree syllabics, just like the pink bootie platforms that LeGrande wore at her artist talk, paired with a silky pink-matching button-down top and short shorts.

 

 

 

 

LeGrande’s work engages in contemporary forms of traditional Indigenous material practices that are a joy and a pleasure to experience. The platforms that are a part of the exhibition, as well as part of the artist’s signature look, exercise linguistic sovereignty every time they are worn or seen, and especially when danced in. Just like the jingles on jingle dance dresses were originally made of snuff tobacco tin lids rolled into cones, LeGrande’s shawl repurposes what is perceived as waste, producing an artwork that is environmentally sound through a Cree worldview of relations between humans and the earth. LeGrande is serving an NDN futurism that connects past and present.

 

 

Two screens play video performance works—one that bears the same name as the exhibition, wherein LeGrande wears the bepsi tab shawl and platform moccasins, dancing on the shores of Lake Wabasca on her ancestral territory, singing Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” in Nêhiyawêwin (Cree). The song is a matrilineal collaborative work; the lyrics were translated by the artist, her mother, and her kokum, and paired with shimmery synth music by Mourning Coup, artist Chandra Melting Tallow’s musical project. The unicorn-coloured ribbons of the shawl echo the colours of the sky in the video, as well as the sky mirrored in the lake—a fashion-glam collaboration between family, sunlight, and water.

 

 

The performance video is mesmerizing: the song, a lullaby that is both familiar, and defamiliarized through Cree lyrics. LeGrande’s dancing moves the fringe of the shawl so it undulates slowly like the water. It’s both playful and serious in exercising sovereignty. Many times during the ongoing pandemic, folks who make art have questioned the need for art, given that we can’t drink, eat, or breathe it, and at times efforts to weaponize it against the settler colonial nation-state have felt futile—but then I witness LeGrande’s work and presence, and I know the world needs her art and her fashion more than ever.

 

 

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