Uploaded March 2025 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Please like this video and subscribe to support the arts in Canada.
ASL description of the new _Microgrants_ component.
An English transcript is included.
Translator: Anselmo DeSousa
Videographer: David Phu
Please like this video and subscribe to support the arts in Canada.
ASL description of the new _Microgrants_ component.
An English transcript is included.
Translator: Anselmo DeSousa
Videographer: David Phu




![Portrait of Dana Claxton, #GGARTS2020 winner
Please like this video and subscribe to support the arts in Canada.
Dana Claxton is a 2020 winner of the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts. Directed by Eric Pauls.
Co-production of the Canada Council for the Arts, Eric Pauls Productions and Six Two Six Productions. Presentation of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Independent Media Arts Alliance.
The Canada Council for the Arts is a federal, arm’s-length Crown corporation created by an Act of Parliament in 1957 (Canada Council for the Arts Act) “to foster and promote the study and enjoyment of, and the production of works in, the arts.”
For more information, visit ggarts.ca
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Transcript:
[Background conversation]
My name is Dana Claxton and I’m a visual artist as well as a filmmaker, video artist, performance artist and professor.
I got an old Canon AE1 when I was sixteen and started taking photos.
I don’t know. My mother was a pretty cool woman. Both of my parents . . . my father liked photography.
You know when you’re young and people ask you, what do you want to be when you grow up?
And I specifically remember the moment. I was four or five years old and I said, ‘I want to be a filmmaker . . .
[ACTOR] The elders speak, for us to listen
. . . and I want to live in New York.’ So I did both of those things.
Art for a New Understanding, thats what Indigenous art is all about: art for a new understanding. If I want to say anything, that’s what it’s about.
Which one is that? You just never know what’s here . . . with all of the . . . oh, that’s beautiful.
Looking at the object, it allows the viewer to think about who they are in relation to what they’re looking at. So, certainly, contemporary Indigenous art and historical art has opened people up. And sometimes that openness can be kind of de-centering, because we have had a very dynamic history in Canada.
It’s interesting how many Indigenous artists I know who initially thought, ‘Oh god, I have to be a lawyer! Oh god, I have to be a social worker! Oh, I have to do something to look at these oppressive frameworks that [are] happening in Canada.’ You know, my mother never got to vote in her own country. In Quebec, Indian people couldn’t vote until 1970.
I mean, it’s slippery. There’s some slippery stuff going on here. And art, because it’s such a site of freedom, is able to question all this stuff.
The future is an interesting place. I always think that artists never retire. We keep making work. But I
know that sometimes I think I should just move over now for a while, but still, I have a zillion ideas. I’ll
just continue to make and I don’t know where it’s going.
But I have said all of this publicly anyhow, so this is what people expect from me. This is what I’m known for.
[DIRECTOR] Yeah, that’s true . . .
It’s what I’m known for, to speak my mind. Otherwise, what’s the point, if you can’t speak your mind?
Connect with us on social media:
Canada Council for the Arts
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Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/canadacouncil
Twitter - https://twitter.com/CanadaCouncil
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/canada-council-for-the-arts/
Website - https://canadacouncil.ca/
Art Bank
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/artbank_banquedart/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CCartbank/
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9fGIx7hZYk
Website - https://artbank.ca/
CCUNESCO - Canadian Commission for UNESCO
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ccunesco/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/CCUNESCO
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/canadian-commission-for-unesco/
Website - https://en.ccunesco.ca/ Portrait of Dana Claxton, #GGARTS2020 winner](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/TxCK03zUNsM/mqdefault.jpg)




![Portrait of Pierre Bourgault, 2022 #GGARTS winner
Please like this video and subscribe to support the arts in Canada.
Pierre Bourgault is a 2022 winner of the Governor Generals Awards in Visual and Media Arts. Directed by Sarah Seené.
A presentation of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Independent Media Arts Alliance.
The Canada Council for the Arts is a federal, arms-length Crown corporation created by an Act of Parliament in 1957 (Canada Council for the Arts Act) to foster and promote the study and enjoyment of, and the production of works in, the arts.
For more information, visit: https://en.ggarts.ca
****
Transcript:
I am known as the “sea sculptor.”
And in everything I’ve done, there have always been lived and felt experiences of the sea.
My exhibitions have all been named after things that relate to the sea, whether it be the wind, boats, all manner of adventures.
I come from a family that has always worked with wood. They are known as woodworkers. And I continued the tradition.
I don’t try to reason anything out. It always has to be subconscious, like an idea that just comes to float over the oil of my brain at night.
I’ve made it a habit that it be literal, in a way. What comes to me is always a sentence. A well-articulated sentence that flows, that is almost musical. And at that moment, so that I don’t lose its quality, I go downstairs and write it down right away because I’ve often lost things that were very interesting.
Everything is political, in the end. As soon as you make a movement—be it secret, discreet or violent—it’s always political. It’s politics, but it’s also poetry. Poetry isn’t always just things written down with smart words that split open, it’s actions as well.
Beauty really comes… “true beauty,” if you can say that, is the quality of the meaning. That’s it. But it isn’t “aesthetic beauty,” it’s beauty in meaning, you know? Beauty that is versatile, that lends itself to any state of mind you may have. Now, that’s beautiful!
All of my sculptures include a space for sleeping, for seeking refuge. I’ve always built little houses, habitable sculptures. They’re like a reserve, like a bird in a place.
What I like to do is to conduct exercises consisting in living in a given space. Even if the sculpture is huge—living in it. Living in the horizon. You build lots of things on the water. Your imagination lands on the water. It reflects the earth, and that reflection is reflected in the sky.
And then, the sky itself, having borrowed the colour and shape of the sea, reflects what is on the earth. It’s two mirrors speaking to each other. That’s what it is.
[Laughs].
Connect with us on social media:
Canada Council for the Arts
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/canada.council/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/canadacouncil
Twitter - https://twitter.com/CanadaCouncil
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/canada-council-for-the-arts/
Website - https://canadacouncil.ca/
Art Bank
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/artbank_banquedart/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CCartbank/
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9fGIx7hZYk
Website - https://artbank.ca/
CCUNESCO - Canadian Commission for UNESCO
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ccunesco/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/CCUNESCO
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/canadian-commission-for-unesco/
Website - https://en.ccunesco.ca/ Portrait of Pierre Bourgault, 2022 #GGARTS winner](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/UxSzlY506MM/mqdefault.jpg)
