Neutral Ground Contemporary Art Forum is currently displaying two digital media works created by Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskwew: White Shame (1992) and Speaking the Language of Spiders (1997).
Born in the Peace River district of mixed Cree and French Canadian descent in 1958, Ahasiw was an early innovator in digital media. Some of his work as an artist and administrator was done at the Canada Council and Banff Centre for the Arts, but in the mid-1990s he spent several years in Regina, and was a founding member and first production manager for Neutral Ground’s digital media facility, which is now known as SOIL Media Art and Technology.
I spoke several times with Ahasiw about his work when he lived in Regina, and also remember him doing some live performance with Michael Toppings when he lived here too (some of you may remember The House Project Toppings did in 2000 when he took an existing house near General Hospital and turned it into a text-based art work).
In the late 1990s Ahasiw left Regina, and in 2006 he passed away while living in Montreal. In addition to the two digital media works noted above, Ghostkeeper also features works by Cheryl L’hirondelle, Adrian Stimson and Archer Pechawis and Sheila Urbanoski done in response to Ahasiw’s projects.
The show runs until Aug. 28, and there’s a reception at Neutral Ground (203-1856 Scarth) on Saturday, Aug. 22 at 8 p.m.
