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“RISING TO THE OCCASION” - 1991
With “Rising to the Occasion”, Belmore revisits the history and its incompleteness. Through an ironic combining of elements from both cultures (British and Aboriginal), she creates a figure that embodies Canada’s past as a British colony - but also as a colonizer - marked by prejudices and intolerance. In this performance, Belmore dresses an imaginary figure with a Victorian gown she wore in 1987, as the Royals came to visit her native community of Thunder Bay. This event, known as “Twelve angry crinolines” witnessed the silent protest of Belmore and other activists against the imposition of the Federal Government in most of the aspects of aboriginal life. The title “Rising to the Occasion” is meant to evoke the fitness – unfitness of First Nations People in a society to which they don’t belong, but which they had to assimilate, with a grotesque result. The occasion here is the revisitation of the history, in particular of the colonial past. The installation is rich in symbolism as well as every other work Belmore has performed. The gown, representing the colonial Britain, lost its aristocratic sophistication in order to embrace a more complex reality, the one of the New World. Here, explicit is Belmore’s attempt to complete the history.
Royal memorabilia, such as the tea service allude again to the British presence. The beaver nest, beads, braids and bush stand for “Indianness” (art Gallery of Windsor, 1994). This figure is dispossessed of its European identity and at the same time is not even completely aboriginal, but it tells the story of past memories, which is the only kind of history the Aboriginal people have.
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