Barry Ace,
Fox Tail Moccasins, 2016
Barry Ace is an Anishinaabe (Odawa) artist, resident in Ottawa, increasingly celebrated for his imaginative and subversive way of reinventing Indigenous culture in the twentieth-first century. He describes his work as “bridging the precipice between historical and contemporary knowledge, art, and power, while maintaining a distinct Anishinaabeg aesthetic connecting generations.” Ace has risen to prominence over the past decades with his contemporary remakes of “beaded” articles—from bandolier bags, garments, and wampum belts to footwear—all embellished with the brightly coloured working hardware components of computer technology: resistors and capacitators.
Ace learned the art of beading from the women in his family on Manitoulin Island, M’Chigeeng First Nation. The word for “beads” in Anishinaabemowin can be translated as “little spirit berries,” small and highly prized objects understood to have animate nature. When you are beading, Ace explains, you are stitching them together, stitching power together. The beads store energy and information, releasing it when it is needed, just as hardware elements do in the context of contemporary digital engineering.
In Fox Tail Moccasins, 2016—currently on view in Early Days at the McMichael—Ace applies beading techniques to the adornment of a pair of men’s shoes and affixes a foxtail to each heel. The work refers to a work on paper depicting two Mandan warriors, Sih-Chida and Mahchsi-Karehde, Mandan Indians, 1832–34, painted by the Swiss-born artist Karl Bodmer (1809–1893), which Ace encountered in the collection of the North American Native Museum in Zurich, Switzerland. In this watercolour, the two Indigenous men are presented wearing “trail-dusters” affixed to their heels—elaborate tassels worn for the purpose of obscuring the wearer’s footprints. In the work contemplated here, the portrait is of Mahchsi-Karehde (Flying War Eagle), though Ace has replaced the subject’s wolf tails with foxtails in his reimagining.
Barry Ace (b. 1958)
Fox Tail Moccasins
2016
found shoes, Arctic foxtails and fur, capacitors, light-emitting diodes, resistors, glass beads, porcupine quills, bone hairpipes, rooster feathers, dyed split feathers, tin cones, white heart trade beads, plastic pony beads, mother-of-pearl buttons, satin edge bias, synthetic porcupine hair, cotton thread, rope, metal, wooden shoe lasts
McMichael Canadian Art Collection
Purchased with the generous support of The Dr. Michael Braudo Fund of the McMichael Canadian Art Foundation
2022.1.A-.B.
Barry Ace (b. 1958)
Fox Tail Moccasins
2016
found shoes, Arctic foxtails and fur, capacitors, light-emitting diodes, resistors, glass beads, porcupine quills, bone hairpipes, rooster feathers, dyed split feathers, tin cones, white heart trade beads, plastic pony beads, mother-of-pearl buttons, satin edge bias, synthetic porcupine hair, cotton thread, rope, metal, wooden shoe lasts
McMichael Canadian Art Collection
Purchased with the generous support of The Dr. Michael Braudo Fund of the McMichael Canadian Art Foundation
2022.1.A-.B.
Karl Bodmer (1809–1893)
Sih-Chida and Mahchsi-Karehde, Mandan Indians
1832–34
aquatint and watercolour on wove paper
62 x 45.2 cm
Nordamerika Native Museum
BO-03218
Early Days: Indigenous Art at the McMichael
Discover more than one hundred works that tell the story of Indigenous art in Canada
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