sísp̓l̓k, a crack, the chariot, and intergenerational contexts of Mariel Belanger’s art-life practice // Erin Scott
As part of a new series of essays taking inspiration from the Alternator archive, Erin Scott explores the ever-evolving community-based arts practice of Mariel Belanger.
Installation view of Women in the Okanagan, Mariel Belanger, Roja Aslani and Tracy Kim Bonneau, 2010.
The Present
On June 13, 2024, I sat down with Syilx artist, woman, and business owner Mariel Belanger to discuss her career. We start with my curiosity around language. I ask her to teach me how to say the name of her newest endeavour, an independent Indigenous-led project which merges traditional Syilx ways with art, land, food security, and intergenerational relations. The project is called Studio sísp̓l̓k̓ and is situated at Head of the Lake, Vernon, BC. Mariel explains that sísp̓l̓k̓ means seven, a number which holds significance as it relates to Indigenous phraseology of seven generations of care and stewardship, but also that the studio itself is on lot seven of her mother’s property. In this moment, Mariel embodies what much of her way of being and artistic practice are all about: she teaches me something new and in doing so, brings me along on her visionary journey.
Mariel teaches me that sísp̓l̓k̓ is multidirectional. It does not flow from an all-knowing institution down into those seeking to know. It flows in both directions; seven generations of elders and seven generations of youth. This is what community-based practitioners such as Belanger endeavour after. Leaving no one behind.
For artist-run centres, or community-led practices, the heart of the work is multidirectional. One cannot define the positive outcomes of these centres, projects, or artists solely on an individual’s trajectory or success. Instead, it is a group endeavour.
I don’t tell Mariel this in our conversation, but sísp̓l̓k̓ as represented in the major arcana of the Tarot is the Chariot. A card which embodies the feminine and gains power from the moon. The Chariot, much like Mariel’s practice, is a vessel for carrying forward not just oneself but many others. Paving a new pathway may not be direct or easy, but the path when followed will yield high rewards. Those who hold the seven-card close to them are persistent, steadfast, and always forward-moving. I find this energy in Belanger’s work, as she carries her traditional and ancestral ways of being and knowing forward with her.
Detail of Women in the Okanagan, Mariel Belanger, Roja Aslani and Tracy Kim Bonneau, 2010.
The Past
Teaching is a relational act, and as my conversation with Mariel unfolded, it became clear that as an artist, her work is relational. Beginning with her involvement with the Okanagan Dance Troupe as a child, then moving into a summer job with Sen’Klip Native Theatre, to being the Program Coordinator for the Sookinchoot Urban Indigenous youth centre, which was critical for Mariel’s future interdisciplinary work as it was this space which fostered media-making, a skill she integrates into her current work, and which informs her Embodied Story Practice in village governance. In short, Mariel has always been making in-relation and with her relations. She refers to it as finding a crack.
In working her way in to established arenas such as galleries, theatres, and the academic institution, Mariel sources gaps or openings where she can subvert the policy, procedures, and standards which uphold tired and antiquated ideas of what art should be.
Her practice and ethos are simultaneously defiant and resistant, gentle and expansive. This is a fine line, or a slim crack, which she describes as vital to up-ending artistic norms. For Belanger, these norms are Eurocentric in essence, proposing that ‘fine art’ holds more value over Indigenous crafts, land-based practices, and relational understanding of making. She defines three distinct spaces where artists are categorized: commercial, fine-arts, and amateur. These artists, for Mariel, are all the same. The difference, she articulates, is determined by the following: where they do their art and why they do their art. In these reflections, we turn once again back to teaching. The solo-artist trope which so many within the art field aspire to and uphold as the ultimate form of success is unravelled, or split open at the crack, when we bring relations and teaching into the fray. Here, Belanger again draws me into her world of community-based arts practices, reflecting on how her own career has seemingly been defined by her community-led practice of making, prioritizing group shows, relationship development, and teaching over solitary success, ‘genius artist’ nonsense, and instead, by pulling open the crack of the fine art world to create space for many.
In reflection of her interdisciplinary practice, Belanger identifies as a dancer, singer, theatre practitioner, installation artist, academic, writer, and more. We chat briefly about her involvement with the group exhibition Women of the Okanagan alongside artists Roja Aslani and Tracy Kim Bonneau which showed at the Alternator in the fall of 2010. For Belanger, this exhibition was a first taste of installation work. This is important to note, and I will try to explain why. Installation work differs from a conventional gallery exhibition where the art rests quietly and discreetly on the (often) white walls of the space. Exhibits ask that viewers keep a distance, do not become too imbricated in the art, and to enjoy for a moment then move on. Installation, on the other hand, is about “context over content” (Kester 5).
By this, I mean, the installation does not ask for passivity but instead requests a commitment. It says to the viewer: come so close that you have no choice but to become part of the work. Your very presence and engagement with the installation redefining and reimagining the artist’s original intent.
This is the life-long work of Mariel Belanger. It is not a passive exchange but an active doing and undoing. This installation allowed Belanger to create a space which echoed the past, featuring old, borrowed furniture and a video which was edited to feel like it was from the 1970’s, a time when her grandparents were alive and thriving, passing to her their traditional ways of being which embody the ethos of sísp̓l̓k̓. For Belanger, this was a playful experiment in what it meant to create a context for the audience, one which they are immersed within and therefore, carry with them for generations to come. The content of the work, while feminist and familial, is less of the focus in her reflections on this piece, but she does clarify to me that it was also a continuation of the work documenting her daughter Sienna’s upbringing in nsyilxcən. The video is about Sienna and her connection to Mariel’s grandmother through their shared name xixutem. This relational work in form and content was defining for what it illuminated from within the crack: as Belanger made in resistance to gallery norms of observation and distance, she also created a pathway for future works focused on creating contexts for familial and community-based art exchanges.
Installation view of Women in the Okanagan, Mariel Belanger, Roja Aslani and Tracy Kim Bonneau, 2010.
The Future
In recent years, Belanger has been working towards her doctorate degree through research-creation. Upholding her truly interdisciplinary nature of working outside the box, she is using artificial realities or videogame contexts to bridge generational gaps and help return urbanized and contemporary Indigenous youth to land-based practices through game-based storytelling. This is fascinating work. As Belanger frames it, “we need to find them in the digital realm and use that to bring them back to the land” (56:55). Focusing on games such as Red Dead Redemption, Belanger has been contracted to experiment with contexts of personal experience and story exchange where parents, children, cousins, aunts, etc, play this game together as a way of connecting across mediums, forms, time, space, and generations. Truly, she has found an access point where the context of connection can be fostered for new learning and new pathways.
In our conversation, Belanger expresses a struggle to define what the crack is that her work is attempting to pry open, and it seems so fitting that the liminal space of the digital would be an exemplification of the crack. This ‘non-space’ space where anyone can gather, holds within it the code of the past and the unlimited imaginings of the future. As an artist, Mariel Belanger embodies this liminal in-between, middle-childness, the unspoken and spoken simultaneously. Belanger is actively making “a world where many worlds fit” (Mignolo ii) through her relational work, by being the chariot and carrying not just herself but many forward. Mariel is sísp̓l̓k̓, and we can be certain that new worlds will arise wherever she cracks them into being.
CITATIONS
Belanger, Mariel. Personal Interview. 13 June 2024.
Kester, Grant H. Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art. U of California P, 2004.
Mignolo, Walter D. "Foreword on Pluriversality and Multipolarity." Constructing the Pluriverse. Edited by Bernd Reiter. Duke U P, New York, 2020.
Mariel Belanger is a PhD candidate and recipient of a 2022-25 CGS SSHRC Doctoral Scholarship, the Teyonkwayenawá:kon – Queens University Graduate Scholarship, MFA SSHRC at UBC-Okanagan, UBC-Okanagan Aboriginal Fellowship, and Indian Brotherhood scholarship. She was awarded Outstanding Indigenous Masters Graduate Student at the 2018 International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry held at University of Illinois in Champaigne-Urbana. Belanger’s research Digital Embodied Story Practice as Indigenizing Research-Creation Methodology explores digital story-making to subvert coloniality and contributes to the growing body of interdisciplinary artistic scholarship that engages Indigenous community, language, and culture, as a bridge for society telling stories of our time.
Erin Scott (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist who works in time-based mediums, including poetry, performance, and video/audio. With publications and performances across forms, they have made spoken word albums, books, exhibitions, drag performances, Fringe shows, and more. Erin holds an MFA and is currently a PhD student at UBCO where she makes videopoems and writes about language, land, and identity.