Jesse Campbell
Flight

Jesse Campbell is a Métis, Saulteaux, and Cree artist and a registered member of the Manitoba Métis Federation. Based on the unceded lands of the Lekwungen people, he has worked as a professional mural artist since 2010 and as a full-time artist and arts facilitator since 2018. He is currently Director of Tah’lum Indigenous Artists Collective and Campbell Visual Arts.

His practice focuses on public art and installation, as well as collaborative work with First Nations artists as an arts advisor and facilitator. Guided by the principle of Wakatowin, or “working in a good way,” Campbell approaches his practice through good intentions, mutual respect, dialogue, and collaboration. His mural work reimagines urban landscapes, bringing forward stories of the land while reclaiming space for nature and the First Peoples of the territory.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Flight (Spray paint, latex paint, on stucco) depicts two distinct bird species interacting with existing murals on these walls. Each bird represents a species which travels between my homelands on the Canadian Prairies and Argentina. They are in their own way a cultural liaison which travels between continents, provinces, and cities as a bastion between communities during their annual migrations between Countries.

In my Michif culture we have protocol around how we visit the land and welcome visitors on our own. In my homeland there is a lot of political tension with my Nation trying to ratify new Treaties and assert our self governance in our homelands. This has been extremely contentious in process, In the larger global perspective, birds have undertaken massive seasonal migrations between continents for thousands of years and are continuously impacted by each nation’s policies regarding conservation, pollution, and habitat. This work examines how a birds right to its traditional lands is politicized regardless of which country it visits.

The bird species depicted include: the Swainson’s Hawk, Buteo swainsoni, a raptor species which migrates from the Canadian prairies and west of the Rockies every year to as far south as the Argentine Pampas. The Wilsons Phalarope, Phalaropus tricolour, which is a unique dabbling bird which travels between wetlands and salt lakes on the continents.