‘Healing Together’ sculpture installed at BU

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This article was published 26/11/2022 (1296 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Standing at more than seven metres tall, Brandon University’s newest art installation was officially unveiled Friday afternoon, with school officials hoping the steel sculpture, titled “Healing Together,” serves as a starting point for conversations about Indigenous truth and reconciliation.

While the sculpture itself was installed on campus Wednesday, university representatives and members of the public gathered Friday to hear from Cree artist and BU faculty member Kevin McKenzie directly.

Throughout last summer, McKenzie worked alongside KanSteel Manufacturing Inc. to turn his original scale model into a full-sized display, which consists of two large interlocking plates set vertically.

McKenzie then cut a jagged piece out of one of the plates and stitched it back together with some red material, leaving the precise meaning of this piece up to audience interpretation.

“The cutout can be interpreted as a wound, a birthing wound, a river, a constellation, just about anything that you can interpret,” he said Friday.

“And I think that’s why we wanted to keep this sculpture abstract, because it’s up to the viewer to determine what the content of the sculpture is.”

The idea for “Healing Together” came to light in the summer of 2021, following the national acknowledgment of mass gravesites at former sites of residential schools across Canada.

Brandon, which is located near a site of a former residential school, is not immune from this dark chapter in the country’s history. BU president David Docherty sent out a campus-wide email to staff, asking them how best to address the intergenerational hurt that was now bubbling to the surface, in the public eye.

English Prof. Rosanne Gasse came up with the idea of commissioning public artwork, believing the project would allow Brandon residents to absorb the issue of Indigenous reconciliation at their own pace.

“Whether it’s through music … or through drama or through sculptures, art tells stories … and it tells stories that can bring us together and can help us heal,” Gasse said during Friday’s ceremony.

“So to me, the most obvious thing in the world was to turn to art, especially when we have such wonderful and creative artists right here on campus.”

After he was hired for the project, McKenzie said, he underwent a “spectrum of emotions” getting “Healing Together” from the design phase all the way to its installation earlier this week.

Part of his process involved researching his own family history, since his father attended the Lebret (Qu’Appelle) Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan as a child.

While McKenzie’s father survived the experience, at least one other family member never returned from residential school, giving the artist a direct connection to the thousands of unidentified Indigenous children who perished at these institutions.

“So the artwork will give a voice to some of those who are not with us today,” he said.

Docherty was also on hand during Friday’s ceremony to highlight the collaborative nature of the art project.

“Healing Together” was also made possible by Ben Wiebe Construction and the university’s own Physical Plant, which gives the BU president hope that the local art scene can remain self-sufficient moving forward.

“I’m so thrilled that we have such amazing talent here on our campus and that we didn’t turn outside to look for what to do,” Docherty said. “We found it inside and … I’ll think about that every time I walk by.”

BU’s new “Healing Together” sculpture is located at the corner of 20th Street and Louise Avenue on campus, right across from the Healthy Living Centre.

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