Saskatoon's Remai Modern answers the pandemic with an apology, a pill, a ritual, a resistance

As we all struggle in this global pandemic, a new exhibition at the Remai Modern in Saskatoon explores pain, and the path to healing. 

The show is called An apology, a pill, a ritual, a resistance. 

"It leaves me feeling hopeful," said Tarah Hogue, the curator of Indigenous art at Remai Modern. 

"We started thinking about artists who can help us to understand health and well-being in different ways and how we can approach healing as a really sort of interconnected system."

The exhibition is a response to the COVID-19 global pandemic, but it builds on contemporary struggles by looking back through history and exploring the 1918 influenza pandemic's impact on Indigenous people, the effects of colonialism and the HIV/AIDS crisis. 

Hogue offers the example of artist Jeffrey Gibson and his video piece that references Indigenous jingle dress dancing as a call from women for healing and strength in the 1918 pandemic "which is obviously very apropos to what we're experiencing right now."

"It's really visually stunning work," she said. "But the work is also meant to honour missing and murdered Indigenous women and to think about the important role that Indigenous women play and in the health and well-being of their communities."

For Hogue, the juxtaposition of different points of history and various forms of suffering leaves her "feeling hopeful for ... possibilities of relating to one another and caring for each other."

An apology, a pill, a ritual, a resistance is open at the Remai Modern and includes work from 20 regional, international and local artists.