TORONTO.- For over 30 years, Rebecca Belmore has created artworks that respond to the pressing concerns of our time. On view at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Rebecca Belmore: Facing the Monumental is the largest survey of Belmore’s work ever presented, and features photography, sculpture and media installations from the past three decades. Filling the fifth floor of the AGO’s Vivian and David Campbell Centre for Contemporary Art, the exhibition extends through a series of satellite installations into the AGO’s Galleria Italia, the AGO’s Joey & Toby Tanenbaum Sculpture Atrium, the AGO’s J.S. McLean Centre for Indigenous and Canadian Art, and the intersection of Queen and Bay streets in downtown Toronto.

Curated by Wanda Nanibush, AGO Curator of Indigenous Art, the exhibition also marks the debut of three new large scale Belmore works, including a large scale public video installation. Highlights in the Gallery include the sixteen-foot wide projection on moving water Fountain (2005) as well as Belmore’s recent sculptural work Biinjiya'iing Onji (From Inside)(2017), a marble tent that since its debut in Athens as part of dOCUMENTA14, has mirrored the path, from Greece through Germany and across the ocean, of so many migrants and refugees.

Renowned for engaging with natural materials and for using her own body and voice, Belmore has been creating performance art since the late 1980s. The exhibition’s title — taken from a performance Belmore staged in Queen’s Park on Canada Day in 2012 — reflects the artist’s desire to express politics through poetic gestures and beautiful images. A member of Lac Seul First Nation (Anishinaabe), Belmore is the recipient of the 2016 Gershon Iskowitz Prize at the AGO.

“Belmore’s powerful works reveal a compelling duality: her lyrical representations of human dignity, the beauty of youth, a sleeping subject, the power of water or the quieting effect of snow are all images that exist in contrast to the turmoil of our world. Her art asks us to consider where we are, and what we face in our future,” said Wanda Nanibush, AGO Curator of Indigenous Art. “These works, seen in isolation, are beautiful. The facts they address, the questions they ask and the violence they reflect on – that is what is political.”

From the AGO’s own collection, the exhibition includes Belmore’s iconic sculpture Rising to the Occasion (1987-1991), which will be installed in the revitalized J. S. McLean Centre for Indigenous and Canadian Art, opening July 1. Incorporating kitschy royal souvenirs with a beaver dam bustle, this garment was worn by Belmore as part of a performance organized in response to a 1987 visit by the Duke and Duchess of York to Thunder Bay.

The exhibition also features three works from the Wave Sound series. These sculptures, which were commissioned by Partners in Art for the LandMarks 2017/Repères 2017 project, reflect in their design the topography of the sites where they were originally installed – notably points in Gros Morne National Park, Banff National Park and Pukaskwa National Park.

“The world will be a different place in 20 years, and we have no idea what that looks like,” said Belmore. “I think that’s why we have conversations, that’s why we have to listen, that’s why we make art.”

One new work making its debut as part of Facing the Monumental, is a large scale video work entitled Nibi. The work, whose title means water, was commissioned by TD Bank Group and will be screened on the Queen and Bay TD Branch – Media Art Wall all summer, flowing onto the intersection of Queen and Bay Streets in downtown Toronto.

A member of Lac Seul First Nation (Anishinaabe), Rebecca Belmore is an internationally recognized multidisciplinary artist. Rooted in the political and social realities of Indigenous communities, Belmore’s works make evocative connections among bodies, land and language. Her group exhibitions include: dOCUMENTA 14 (2017), Athens, Greece, Echigo-Tsumari Triennial, Niigata Prefecture, Japan (2015); Global Feminisms, Brooklyn Art Museum, New York (2007); Land, Spirit, Power, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON (1992); and Creation or Death: We will Win, Havana Biennial, Cuba (1991). Belmore was a recipient of the Gershon Iskowitz Prize in 2016 for her outstanding contribution to the visual arts in Canada, Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2013, the Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Award in 2009, and Honorary Doctorates from the Ontario College of Art and Design University in 2005 and Emily Carr University in 2018.