JOSEPH TISIGA Yukon Prize icon 2021 YUKON PRIZE RECIPIENT

ARTIST BIO

Joseph Tisiga was born in 1984 and is a member of the Kaska Dena Nation. He maintains a multidisciplinary practice that is rooted in painting and drawing and includes performance, photography, sculpture and installation. His work reflects upon notions of identity and what contributes to this construct -community, nationality, family, history, location, real and imagined memories – questions that have become all the more relevant in the current climate. Tisiga’s works look at cultural and social inheritance, the mundane, the metaphysical and the mythological, often all at once and on the same surface. This conflation of interests and perspectives plays itself out in the artist’s narratives that are non-linear, cross cultural and supernatural.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My work is informed more by ephemeral qualities of living in the Yukon, than by the land or aesthetic characteristics of the geography that artists in the Yukon may typically respond to. I do not have much classical interest in landscapes or nature themes, though land and traditional concepts are present throughout my practice. Thematically I tend to continually shift reference points to reflect on subjects involving, but not limited to, the biographical, notions of ‘Indigeneity’, colonialism, art and social histories. I am motivated by an effort to contribute to the dialogue around First Nation/’Indigenous’ identity and culture, and its complex intersections to the present world.

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