The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) announced last July the appointment of Léuli Eshrāghi as “curator of indigenous arts”, the first position of its kind for a French-speaking institution in the world. In addition to enriching the MMFA collection, the artist and curator presents his own works in major museums — installations and performances that draw on his Samoan heritage and his sensitive relationship with life.
When Léuli Eshrāghi welcomes us into her bright apartment in Villeray, three long canvases lie rolled up in the middle of the living room. They have just returned from the Tate Modern in London. These pieces of silk in the shape of human tongues on which poems and images are printed are part of his series Siapo viliata o le atumotumeaning “animated bark webs of the archipelago” in Samoan.
The artist grew up between Samoa, Vanuatu and Australia, and she spent a few years in Montreal for her postdoctoral work. Samoan is her mother tongue, but Léuli Eshrāghi is also fluent in English, French and Spanish, and she has learned the Creole languages of Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea.
“A large part of my approach as an artist and curator [néologisme utilisé par le MBAM issu de la fusion des mots conservateur et conservatrice] is dedicated to creating bridges between indigenous cultures and promoting their potential, beyond questions of diversity,” maintains Léuli Eshrāghi. His works therefore refer to Samoan iconography and also deal with broader themes specific to indigenous cultures, such as non-heteronormative sexuality and the “precolonial relationship with nature”.
“Human-animal kinship”
Its installation Re(cul)birth, which was presented at Momenta in 2021, addressed all of these topics at once. Eight fabrics on which ancestral motifs were printed converged towards a pool of water, in the Diagonal gallery, recalling a “ceremonial setting to honor precolonial human-animal kinship”. A video played at the same time on a loop, representing naked indigenous people, evoking “how consent, mutual respect and tenderness are linked to the fact of receiving and giving tactile pleasure”.
For his series Siapo viliata o le atumotu, his poems were printed on images generated using artificial intelligence, inspired by the “colonial archives of Samoan barkcloth”. Bark work, such as tapa, where the bark is beaten to make fabric, also occupies a preponderant place in the history of Pacific Island art. And Léuli Eshrāghi’s childhood was deeply marked by it.
“My parents weren’t artists, but they were a bit hippies. Both of my grandmothers were artisans, and my aunt and maternal grandmother dried sea cucumbers for the Chinese market. […] I grew up with lots of handmade items. » Remembering his childhood, the artist takes out of his library a doll and sandals made from dried and woven bark. “I have always been immersed in this materiality which still permeates my work. »
The Pacific, “a highway”
His relationship with water influences him just as much. “Water has always linked indigenous cultures around the world. The Pacific, 200 years ago, was a highway. There are even connections between cultures as distant as the Maori in New Zealand and the Haida on Haida Gwai [en Colombie-Britannique]. Montreal is also an island. We tend to forget it. »
Léuli Eshrāghi even completed part of his secondary studies in Vanuatu, an archipelago which was administered jointly by France and the United Kingdom until its independence in 1980. “I met, at the time, other indigenous peoples of the Pacific, while having [pris la mesure] consequences of colonization. At 13, I already spoke French. » And it was to French literature that part of his life was devoted.
“Back in Australia, I studied French literature and indigenous studies, among other things because I did not feel comfortable in art schools where almost no one came from the islands, but also because I I was interested in marginality. In the Pacific, French remains a minority compared to English, a bit like in Canada. »
Committed commissioner
His artistic career then grew out of his involvement with self-run indigenous artist centers in Australia. “All the Indigenous art exhibitions I saw at the time seemed superficial and celebrated a false idea of diversity. Yet Indigenous artists speak about femicide, climate change and intergenerational trauma. I wanted to explore these questions further and involve indigenous artists within major institutions. »
This approach still guides his work at the MMFA. Responsible for the acquisition of new indigenous works for the museum’s permanent collection, Léuli Eshrāghi plans to “open the institution” to new territories. “We have a beautiful collection of Inuit art, but we can turn more towards the indigenous nations of the wooded territories, like here, or even towards [celles] who were immersed in the French-speaking culture of Louisiana. »
His new functions also present themselves as an opportunity to use his research on the visibility of indigenous artists within institutions. “I will fight to stop perpetuating the prejudice according to which French-speaking organizations are behind the English-speaking community. Thousands of indigenous people from different nations live in Greater Montreal. You have to work with them. Not just playing catch-up, but taking concrete action. »