C Mag

Aylan Couchie

Aylan Couchie is an interdisciplinary artist and sometimes-writer hailing from Nipissing First Nation in Northern Ontario. She is a NSCAD University alumna and received her MFA in Interdisciplinary Art, Media and Design at OCAD University, where she focused her studies on reconciliation and its relationship to monument and public art. Her written, gallery and public works explore histories of the colonial landscape, Indigenous erasure and issues of representation and cultural appropriation. Aylan currently lives and works in Toronto.

Feature

Issue 142

We Didn’t Know What the Monument Meant Until Someone Said It Should Be Removed

byAylan Couchie

Aylan Couchie asks: what role are monuments playing in our current society? By surveying how monuments are erected and removed to signify shifting historic, social, and political ideologies, Couchie turns to the treatment of Canada’s colonial monuments to think of ways we could move forward with reconciliation.

Indigenous Public art Critique

Feature

Issue 139

'Zeal Without Wisdom': Rushing for Reconciliation

byAylan Couchie

Artist Aylan Couchie reflects on her participation in The Mush Hole Project—a site-specific art installation within the Mohawk Institute residential school—organized in September 2016 by the University of Waterloo. As the project was produced in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report, the initiative’s failures are fleshed out as a means of guiding future initiatives to better outcomes.

Indigenous Curatorial practice History