Sonia Robertson
Ilnu from Mashteuiatsh, where she currently resides, Sonia Robertson is an artist, an art therapist, a curator, and a businesswoman. With a bachelor's degree in Interdisciplinary Art from the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi since 1996, she has participated in numerous art events in Canada, France, Haiti, Mexico and Japan. She has developed an in-situ and increasingly participatory approach. Art is a great means of self-expression and healing for her. She also completed a master's degree in Art Therapy at UQAT during which she created works on the imaginary realm of hunter-gatherers.
Actively involved in her community, she champions art as a means of empowerment and expression for her people. She has co-founded several organizations and events; including the Diane Robertson Foundation, now Kamishkak’Arts, which supports emerging and established artists, and uses art as a social lever through various projects; the Chicoutimi TouT-TouT artist workshops in 1995; Kanatukulieutsh uapikun in 2001 which safeguards and promotes the Pekuakamiulnuatsh knowledge of plants, and the Festival de contes et legends Atalukan (Atalukan Festival of Tales and Legends) in 2011.
As a curator, she mostly works on long-term participative projects that bridge the gap between art and art therapy in order to strengthen ties between Nations. She has worked as a project manager for the Musée amérindien de Mashteuiatsh’s permanent and participative exhibit L’esprit de Pekuakamiulnu and for the Aki Odehi project in Abitibi. Both projects receiving high praise from the Société des musées du Québec. She has participated in several conferences and think thanks on Indigenous art in Canada. She was also the instigator and spokesperson for Idle No More in Lac-Saint-Jean.
CREATIVE APPROACH
After music, photography was Sonia Robertson’s first means of expression. Indigenous peoples forbid photographing ceremonies, as photos are known for stealing the subject’s soul. That is how Robertson uses photography. Her photos and works become a tangible proof of the spiritual experience one has with the invisible, the soul of the peoples and exhibition spaces. Her interest in using space to create sacred places and reconstruct atmospheres brought her to installations. Her impulse to refine, to get to the essence, and to get close to others brought her to see bodies as meaningful material and to explore performance/dance and the relational aesthetic while pursuing her installations.
Her work, usually in-situ, only exist for and through the spaces for which they were created. They represent a moment, an instant, the now, and repeated gestures inspired by those of craft women from her community. Full of levity and movement, they become a communion/the tension between the light and shadows, the body and spirit, the material and the beyond. Through her sometimes political, healing and/or participatory work, Robertson wishes to bring the public to think about respect for all lifeforms. Her practice focuses on polarity, shifts in perception, space limits (venues), materials (sometimes immaterial), and the role of First Nations in the world. Her approach is informed by her search for unity, gratitude, imagination, traditional teachings and history as a member of the First Nations. But above all, art is, for Robertson, a means of expression, of healing and of connecting to the realm of the fancy and of the spirits. Her imagination is inspired by that of her Ilnu ancestors and is informed by her dreams and experiences.
Installations, art-action, dance, writing, storytelling, audiovisual exploration are various disciplines she likes to explore.