Visual Arts: Traditions Maintained, Adapted or Appropriated

Remember from earlier grades

In Grade 6 you studied how art reflects beliefs and traditions, including Métis floral beadwork, the Woodland style of Norval Morrisseau and Inuit prints from Kinngait. In Grade 7 you read signs, symbols, icons and logos, explored style (Pop Art and Kenojuak Ashevak's The Enchanted Owl), and looked at how art shapes identity.

In Grade 8 you'll ask what happens to traditions over time and when they travel: are they maintained, adapted, or appropriated? And how can you learn from other cultures respectfully?

Who gets to use a design?

Imagine you design a pattern for your family that tells a story only your family knows. Then a company prints it on T-shirts without asking, gets the meaning wrong, and keeps all the money.

How would that feel? That question is at the heart of today's lesson.

Maintained, adapted, appropriated

Maintained: artists keep a tradition close to how it has long been done, passing on its techniques and meanings.

• Ukrainian Canadian families and artists make pysanky: eggs decorated with designs drawn in beeswax and dipped in dye, one colour at a time. The tradition came to Canada with Ukrainian immigrants and continues today.
• Métis artists today continue floral beadwork on clothing, bags and moccasins. The Métis have long been called the "Flower Beadwork People" for this tradition.

Adapted: artists change a tradition, combine it with new ideas or bring it to new materials, while keeping a connection to its roots. Many artists adapt their own traditions.

• Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, a Haida artist, created Haida manga, which combines Haida formline (the flowing lines, ovoids and U-shapes of Northwest Coast art) with the panels of Japanese manga comics.
• In the late 1950s, Inuit artists in Kinngait (then called Cape Dorset), Nunavut, began making prints, adapting printmaking methods to tell their own stories in their own styles. The studio still produces an annual print collection today.
• Christi Belcourt, a Métis artist, is known for paintings that adapt the look of Métis floral beadwork, using thousands of carefully placed dots of paint.

Appropriated: someone outside a culture takes its images, symbols or sacred objects without permission, understanding or credit, often to make money. Examples include fake "Indigenous-style" art made by people who are not Indigenous, and sacred items, such as eagle-feather headdresses that are earned and carry deep meaning in some First Nations, being worn as party costumes. Appropriation can spread stereotypes, take income from the culture's own artists and disrespect what is sacred.

Since 1958, Canada has used the Igloo Tag trademark to identify authentic art made by Inuit artists, helping buyers avoid imitations.

Appreciation versus appropriation

You can learn from and be inspired by other cultures. The difference is how:

• Learn what the art means, ideally from people of that culture.
• Credit your sources and influences.
• Respect what is sacred or restricted; some designs belong to specific families or Nations and are not for others to use.
• Support artists from the culture, for example by buying from them directly.
• Make it your own: draw on your own experiences and family traditions.

Reading signs, symbols and style

To read a traditional art work, ask: What motifs repeat? What colours and materials are used? Is the style flat or realistic, bold or delicate? What might the symbols mean to the people who made it? Meaning depends on culture and context, so look for information from the community itself, such as a museum label written with community members, an artist's statement, or a cultural centre's website.

Motifs, textures and 3D constructions

Many traditions build designs from motifs: simple shapes repeated, reflected and rotated. Floral beadwork, quilt blocks, pysanky, tile patterns and textile designs all do this.

In Grade 8 you can build complex three-dimensional constructions from motifs: a relief made of layered cardboard, a sculpture of folded paper units, or a box covered in repeated designs. Combine real textures (corrugated cardboard, fabric, string, bark) with illusory textures (drawn or painted to look like wood grain, fur or stone). Look for textures in your environment: bricks, tree bark, ice on a window, a knitted toque.