Essay: Sonny Assu, “Legacy Format”
Installation view, “Legacy Format”, Sonny Assu, 2023. Image Equinox Gallery.
Kate Hennessy was recently invited to write an essay for Sonny Assu’s solo exhibition of digital jacquard woven blankets at Vancouver’s Equinox Gallery. Read the essay here.
Excerpt: “Sonny Assu recalls the transformative experience of visiting the Ottawa institution now known as the Canadian Museum of History with a letter in hand, written by his grandmother Mitzi Assu. In it she requests that her grandson be granted access to the Chilkat robe, dance apron, and frontlet that were the belongings of his great-great-grandfather, Hereditary Chief Billy Assu, which she and her husband Herbie Assu had sold to the museum decades before with the intention of their long-term protection and preservation. In the sterile space of the museum’s vast collections, curators placed the robe on Sonny’s shoulders. He describes feeling an energy transmitted through his body, the weight and materiality of the woolen garment, a spark conducting a direct connection to his Kwakwaka’wakw ancestors, and the knowledge, ceremony, and resilience woven into the regalia.”
Installation view, “Legacy Format”, Sonny Assu, 2023. Image Equinox Gallery.
Installation view, “Legacy Format”, Sonny Assu, 2023. Image Equinox Gallery.
Installation view, “Legacy Format”, Sonny Assu, 2023. Image Equinox Gallery.