Sold for: $10,625

PROVENANCE
Equinox Gallery, Vancouver
Acquired from the above by the present Private Collection, Vancouver

LITERATURE
Sonny Assu, “Longing,” Sonny Assu Interdisciplinary Artist, n.d., para. 3, https://www.sonnyassu.com/pages/longing

Longing #11 is from a series that Sonny Assu created from found objects, discovered on a walk in his reserve in the traditional territory of the We Wai Kai Nation, on northeastern Vancouver Island. The objects, offcut notches of cedar, are a by-product from the manufacture of log houses by a company that leased the land for that purpose. On discovering these objects, Assu was struck by their unintentional resemblance to Northwest Coast masks, and more powerfully by the meaning contained within their material and history.

In the words of the artist:

These “masks” have an inherent beauty: the poetics of a chainsaw paired with centuries-old growth rings reveal the wisdom of these once majestic cedar trees. Each one has a face and story within—and therefore also an inherent wealth. The felling of the rainforest enables us to display wealth in the form of luxury vacation homes, but we often give little thought to the waste produced by such affluence.

Assu chose to mount these masks with museum-quality mounts on museum plinths, to outwardly show their wealth “in an artistic and anthropological sense.”

Works from the Longing series are in the collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Please note this work includes a base measuring 57 1/2" x 12" x 12", as intended by the artist.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars

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