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Lori Blondeau

Performance

As a Cree/Saulteaux artist, Lori Blondeau’s artistic practice continues to explore the nfluence of popular media and culture (contemporary and historical) on Aboriginal self- dentity, self-image, and self-definition. Lori has been culturally producing as an artist, instructor, and curator for the last 20 years. She is currently exploring the impact of the colonization of traditional and contemporary roles and lifestyles of Aboriginal women by
strategically deconstructing the popular images of the Indian Princess and the Squaw. Blondeau uses humour as a performative storytelling strategy to reconstruct these stereotypes, reveal their absurdity, and reinsert them into the mainstream. The performance personas she creates, like Belle Sauvage, refer to the damage of colonialism and to the ironic pleasures of displacement and resistance. Lori Blondeau is currently completing her Ph.D. in interdisciplinary studies at the University of Saskatchewan. She is also a co-founder and the current director of one of Canada’s most innovative Aboriginal arts organizations, TRIBE. Blondeau’s collaborations and apprenticeships with other internationally renowned artists including Bradlee Larocque and James Luna have produced works such as The Ballad of the Shameman and Betty Daybird (2000).