Staats' lens based work combines language, mnemonics, and the natural world as an ongoing process of visualizing a Hodinöhsö:ni' restorative aesthetic that defines relational multiplicities with condolence and renewal. Motivation of his work comes from an existential displacement from the Kanien'kehá:ka language and subsequent relational worldview, while at the same time reflecting his on reserve lived experience. Staats' installations combine the performative burdens of condolence, renewal, and his continuously re-imagined role as observer and participant, in an effort to elevate the mind and countervail complex trauma, disassociation, and loss of self. His ongoing photographic practice situates itself in a continuum of remembering and self-reflection, strengthened through orality, embodied wampum, and visualized mnemonics.
Staats has said, "I'm interested in diverse layers of communication; paradoxically, of the wordless as an entity-by which I mean, torn from the Tuscarora or Mohawk languages of my traditional belonging, I am presented with a void in my practice. Yet I carry a reciprocal responsibility to knowledge, so returning to Six Nations as a participant in the land and an observer of its latent meanings, I have acquired a new enthusiasm through a de-essentialized process-of image gathering and being in a state of constant reflexive return. The dissociation brought about by my dilemma becomes a wandering with purpose that allows the gleaning of images and events as evidence stored within the land. Once this evidence is picked up, I then decode and present what a wordless trauma would look like. Dissimilar images can also reveal unexpected affinities, as if they shadowed one another. I exist within the process of transforming belonging by way of selecting more complex images that challenge essential thinking. The images here are of deep personal connections to family, land, and systemic deficits that continue to exist. Working through personal condolence countervails the dragging of an ancestral presence, which casts a traumatic shadow. The idea is to recognize that trauma precipitates a transitional stage of change."
Greg Staats is the recipient of the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts (2024); the Toronto Arts Foundation's Inaugural Indigenous Artist Award (2021) and the Duke and Duchess of York Prize in Photography (1999). Recent solo exhibitions include: Art Gallery of Ontario; daphne Indigenous Art Centre, articule (Montreal), Kelowna Art Gallery, Urban Shaman Gallery, Tom Thomson Gallery, McMaster Museum of Art, KWAG, Mercer Union, Gallery TPW, G44, Trinity Square Video/Images Festival, Galerie Séquence, QC., and CONTACT Photo Festival at Todmorden Mills. Group exhibitions include: Art Gallery of York University; Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery; National Gallery of Canada; Varley Art Gallery of Markham [OAAG award 2019]; MOCNA Sante Fe. Staats served as Faculty for two Aboriginal Visiting Artist Residencies, Banff Centre (2009, 2010). Staats' works are held in several public, private, and corporate collections. A solo exhibition opens at Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queen's University in 2027.
Greg Staats Skarù:reˀ (Tuscarora) / Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) was born in 1963 in Ohsweken, Six Nations of the Grand River Territory, Ontario. Since 1986 he has lived and worked in Toronto / Tkaronto (Mississaugas of the Credit, Hodinöhsö:ni', Anishinabewaki ᐊᓂᔑᓈᐯᐗᑭ, and Wendake-Nionwentsïo Territory). He received a degree in Applied Photography from Sheridan College, Toronto (1983) and has pursued lens-based photography, video installation, performance and sculpture full time ever since.
