This spring, MoMA PS1 presents a retrospective of artist, activist, and musician Alanis Obomsawin (Abenaki, b. 1932), one of Canada’s most renowned filmmakers. The exhibition spans six decades of her multidisciplinary practice, bringing together a selection of films, sculptures, and sound, as well as rarely seen ephemera that sheds light on their production. The Children Have to Hear Another Story features early works such as Christmas at Moose Factory (1971), a short animated film that depicts the afflictions of residential schools through children’s drawings, as well as prized documentaries like Kanehsatake: 270 years of Resistance (1993), which charts the Mohawk resistance against the expansion of a golf course into sacred burial lands. Tracing her lasting contributions to social change, The Children Have to Hear Another Story brings Obomsawin’s innovative model of Indigenous cinema into focus.
Alanis Obomsawin: The Children Have to Hear Another Story is organized by Richard Hill, Smith Jarislowsky Senior Curator of Canadian Art, Vancouver Art Gallery, and Hila Peleg, Independent Curator. The exhibition is made possible through a partnership between Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin, Art Museum at the University of Toronto, and the Vancouver Art Gallery in collaboration with the National Film Board of Canada and CBC/Radio Canada, and with support from the Canada Council for the Arts.
The presentation at MoMA PS1 is organized by Elena Ketelsen González, Assistant Curator, MoMA PS1.
