Indigenous fashion spotlighted at new exhibition at Art Gallery of Regina

A tour de force of fashion designers and artists is being unveiled at the Art Gallery of Regina this September in their new exhibition – The Fashion Show.

The exhibition, running from September 25 to November 14, features garments and visual art from four Saskatchewan fashion designers and artists. The show confronts prejudices that have kept fashion out of galleries, and invites viewers to appreciate fashion as a force for self-expression, cultural dialogue, and positivity.

The four artists making up The Fashion Show are: Lisa Wicklund, an established fashion designer; David Le, a printmaking and emerging fashion design student; Geanna Rae, a self taught artist; and Jason Baerg, an internationally recognized visual artist and fashion designer.

“When we think about cultural identity of Indigenous people, throughout history we would really portray our identities through what we would wear. A Chief would be embellished with specific things and key key signatures that this is an important person,” said Baerg.

“So I think about what is informing those choices. In fashion, as well as in modelling, I think about the practices of performance, and I think about the embodiment of our culture, the stories of our journeys. They’re innately imbued in a gesture, in a posture.”

As part of the exhibition, Baerg will present key works from the first four years of their fashion practice. The fashion pieces are centred around the medicine wheel, with yellow representing sunrises and infancy, red honouring earth metals, blue representing water, and white representing the senior years of our lives and ancestral knowledges, said Baerg.

Four garments from the four directions will be displayed on a circular rack in the middle of the gallery. Additionally, Baerg will showcase two paintings they made during a residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, inspired by the landscapes of the Canadian Rockies.

“I used those moments to dive deeper into those traditional teachings, to take in new things to consider, and how those things could be portrayed on the body in relationship to the earth and the runway,” said Baerg. “Those thing are echoed through this fashion production.”

A Cree-Métis artist from Prince Albert, and a member of both the Métis Nation-Saskatchewan and the Métis Nation of Ontario, Baerg’s upbringing in northern Saskatchewan has greatly influenced their artistic practice and voice.

A 2-Spirit person raised by their mother and aunts, Baerg spent their formative years in Prince Albert, immersed in family, Métis culture, and the contemporary pop culture of the time.

“I watched a lot of MuchMusic, all these key things that framed my experimental film through mass media. I was also inspired by things like Fashion File and fashion television,” said Baerg.

“Seeing the world through television opened up my curiosity, which led me to become an artist.”