MOCA’s latest exhibition combines North Pacific Indigenous narratives and Japanese cartooning
The exhibition features works by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas that pose questions about culture, identity, and histories.
By Canadian Interiors On Sep 19, 2024
Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, Daalkaatlii Diaries, installation view, MOCA Toronto, 2024. Photo: LF Documentation. © Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas.
A new exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Toronto features newly commissioned works by Vancouver-based artist Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, who created and popularized the graphic style of Haida manga.
The exhibition, which is on display now, is located in the Price Family Community Gallery, and features works whose style incorporates a mixture of North Pacific Indigenous narratives, frame lines, and Japanese cartooning.
The works in the exhibition pose questions about culture, identity, and histories past and present, and aim to avoid “simple categorization.”
Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, Daalkaatlii Diaries, installation view, MOCA Toronto, 2024. Photo: LF Documentation. © Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas.
Commissioned by MOCA for the Ground Floor, Yahgulanaas has created Daalkaatlii Diaries, a work that began as a book. The work has been reimagined as 26 large-scale panels in the form of an accordion. As visitors enter, they are greeted by Flesh Tones, which is a pair of new experimental kinetic sculptures.
In the North End Gallery is Red, a multi-panel Haida-manga tragedy about two siblings. Both Daalkaatlii Diaries and Red invite viewers to explore new ways of reading and experiencing an artist’s style of storytelling.
Yahgulanaas’ wall sculptures created from the hoods of cars are also on display. These symbols of privilege in contemporary North American society have been treated with copper leaf, and reference a sign of wealth among the Haida and other Pacific societies.
Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, Red: A Haida Manga, installation view, MOCA Toronto, 2024. Photo: LF Documentation. © Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas. Courtesy of the Museum of Anthropology, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Yahgulanaas is an award-winning visual contemporary artist and author whose works explore themes of cultural identity, ecology, and the barriers and openings in the human condition. Yahgulanaas’ work is held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, British Museum in London, Seattle Art Museum, Denver Art Museum, and the Vancouver Art Gallery among others.
The exhibition will be on display until January 26, 2025.
