Portrait of David Garneau,

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David Garneau is a 2023 winner of the Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts.
Video directed by Aaron Zeghers.
A 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: en.ggarts.ca
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Transcript:
It would be the mid-1970s, and I was in high school. I saw an article on Joe Fafard, and I really liked his work. I liked that he lived on the Prairies, and I decided I was going to be Joe Fafard.
I wanted to be a sculptor, at first. I had my first solo show in 1980, when I was about 18 years old. A reporter came in and interviewed me and said something to the effect that I was Métis, and I was like, “What?” I’d never heard that word before.
Look around you, this is a Native gallery.
I was surprised. Because it was just the kind of art that I was interested in, and it was a gallery in the neighbourhood.
So my trajectory was shaky at the beginning. I was always interested art. I was making these sculptures. I was making strange mobiles. My mum painted and was a wonderful painter, and I didn’t want to be stepping on her toes and try to do something she was doing. But eventually, that’s where I had to go.
I met my partner, Sylvia Ziemann, who is also an artist, in art school. Went out to Nova Scotia for a while. The Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. I got introduced to theory, and it just blew my mind. Going out there and seeing the kind of idea-driven work… there was no going back.
The idea of getting ideas into art, and then writing about the larger field of art-making and curation. Something that I became really interested in. I’ve decided to be a painter primarily. I’ve decided to work in realism. I’m full of ideas around Métis identity. Being Indigenous in the academy. Indigenous ways of knowing and being.
I’m trying to get that all in a still life painting. And if I’m not able to realize the idea in a painting, then I can work on writing, sculpting something for a video or a performance. It’s just this restless energy that motivates me more than anything else.
The fate of writers and thinkers is that when their ideas are understood and absorbed, they sort of fade away.
And the idea is the thing... that’s way more important. I’d rather have changed somebody’s mind than have them pay attention to me. I don’t like attention. I don’t like public speaking. I don’t like... this! I don’t like being recorded on camera, I can’t stand it.
I’d rather be known for a good turn of phrase that changes your mind, or a picture that helps summarize some of your thoughts and feelings. A lot of people know me by my writing, but I've never published my own book. Those people tend not to know me as a painter, and the ones who know me as a painter may not know my work as a curator.
I think what this award does is [it] focusses people’s attentions on myriad aspects of what I have done. And to be heard on these multiple levels has just been the great privilege of my life.

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