Treaty Dress
Artist
Ruth Cuthand
(Canadian, born 1954)
Date1986
Mediumacrylic on canvas
DimensionsOverall: 121.5 x 172.9 cm (47 13/16 x 68 1/16 in.)
Credit LineThe Mendel Art Gallery Collection at Remai Modern. Purchased 1992.
Object number1992.7
Classificationspainting
On View
Not on viewRuth Cuthand was inspired to create this series of monoprints and paintings by the Ghost Dance, a short-lived practice in the late 19th-century that was developed as a response to displacement and starvation across North America. The dance was performed by men and women in ceremonial shirts in a ritualized attempt to restore the buffalo, resume tribal life and to bring back the dead. Cuthand transforms the warrior’s shirt into a woman’s dress as a comment on the lack of female voices in Indigenous history and experiences.
These early works introduce Cuthand’s anti-aesthetic technique, which is employed as a strategy to provoke deeper consideration. Treaty Dress, which features elements of the American and British flags, points to the ongoing failures of government to uphold the spirit and intent of treaties signed across North America. Some of the dresses in the series address political issues while others evoke portraits, all crudely painted to avoid romantic sympathizing. The dress as a form embodies despair, hope and the ongoing resistance of Indigenous women.
These early works introduce Cuthand’s anti-aesthetic technique, which is employed as a strategy to provoke deeper consideration. Treaty Dress, which features elements of the American and British flags, points to the ongoing failures of government to uphold the spirit and intent of treaties signed across North America. Some of the dresses in the series address political issues while others evoke portraits, all crudely painted to avoid romantic sympathizing. The dress as a form embodies despair, hope and the ongoing resistance of Indigenous women.
