Artist Statement

In the antler series I have embellished, adorned and repositioned these "organic weapons" as art objects, as a way of focusing on their aesthetically sophisticated and very sensual beauty, and on the relationship and balance between the masculine and feminine. I approached the creation of this series as collaboration with (male) individuals from the Deer, Moose, and Caribou Nations, whom I consider to be great artists.

The wall mounted, "coded" antlers in the series display words from our Plains Cree tipi pole teachings, where each pole of a tipi has a word associated with it that represents a cultural value. On each antler one of these words has been translated and then handwritten in binary code over the antler’s surface. Binary code is both a contemporary (computer technology), and a very ancient (African divination) language. All ones and zeroes, its geometric form takes on a "tribal" look when written by hand.

Taking something so heavily associated with Western digital technology and (re)infusing it with an organic quality becomes an entwined act of wry/playful decolonization or "reverse appropriation" with an emphasis on the relationship between nature and technology.

Artist Bio

Multi-disciplinary Cree-Métis artist Jude Norris, employs idiosyncratic combinations of "Native" material, language, traditional creative practice, and iconography with elements of western technology, art practice, theory, and language. She was a recipient of a Chalmer’s Arts Fellowship and has received awards from the Canada Council, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council. Her work has been exhibited internationally. Norris has studied integrated media at the Ontario College of Art & Design in Toronto, Ontario and studied art at Middlesex University and Kensington & Chelsea College in London, England.