Duane Linklater
BiographyDuane Linklater is Omaskêko Cree, from Moose Cree First Nation in northern Ontario. He has been actively involved in his culture, attending its ceremonies, pow-wows and singing at round dances, and pursuing what he describes as the sacred knowledge of the elders. His art first took shape in Grade 13 with formal art classes in Timmins, ON. This was followed by foundation studies at University of Toronto (ON), art classes at University of Alaska (USA) and subsequently a Bachelor in Native Studies and BFA (2005) at the University of Alberta (Edmonton, AB). Cree artist, Jane Ash Poitras was an important influence. While in Edmonton, the artist exhibited urban-inspired abstracts in the form of large mixed-media canvases and smaller collage-style drawings. Influences at the time included graffiti and street art as well as the works of Carl Beam, another leading First Nations artist.
Since then Linklater has imaginatively widened his practice with performance, installation, film and other media. In 2012, he completed his MFA in Film and Video at Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School of Arts (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY). While there, he began to engage with reconsidering and recovering oral traditions, the transmission of knowledge and stories, appropriation and authorship. He also collaborates with other artists. With Brian Jungen, he made a 16mm silent colour film Modest Livelihood (2012). They made the film about their hunting trip in reference to First Nations’s rights to fish and hunt. With spouse Tanya Lukin Linklater, he created an installation with Tanya’s new sculptural work for a 2016 Art Gallery of Alberta exhibition, A Parallel Excavation. In 2013, Linklater won the prestigious Sobey Art Award given to a Canadian artist under forty.
