La Rábida is a Franciscan monastery overlooking the mouth of the Rio Tinto
near the small town of Palos de la Frontera on the Atlantic coast of Spain.
Christopher Columbus set sail from this place in August 1492 confident he
would find a new route to Asia. He landed instead on an island in the
Caribbean Sea. The cultural confrontation that followed his landing is the
inspiration and subject of this exhibition.

The development of La Rábida, Soul of Conquest: an Anishinaabe
encounter began in 2015 and 2016, when artist Bonnie Devine visited Spain
intending to examine the legacy of Columbus from an Indigenous
perspective. Her research evolved into a broader investigation of the
religious justification for the seizure of land and the subjugation of
Indigenous populations in the Americas when she happened on the
monastery at La Rábida. Using primary source material gathered from
Europe and the Americas, including the 1493 Papal Bull Inter Caetera
– the Doctrine of Discovery, the Nueva Corόnica y Buen Gobierno by
Guáman Poma from 1615, and the current town seal of Whitesboro, New
York, among others, Devine documents the enduring impact of the
Columbus landing in painting, drawing, video, sculpture and an original
commissioned choral work by David DeLeary.

This exhibition comes at a pivotal time when public and government
attention is focused on the Truth and Reconciliation process. Devine’s work
in La Rábida draws on a repository of historic documents, monuments, and
texts that report the violence and injustice of colonialism. The practice of
truth telling is not new - some of the accounts cited in Devine’s exhibition
date from as early as the era of initial contact. That these accounts are
publicly accessible, yet largely ignored in dominant historical narratives
reveals how easily power structures are maintained. Devine presents these
documents with a stark honesty that lays bare the ongoing insidious effects
of colonization.

Organized and Circulated by the Art Gallery of Peterborough.

A chi-miigwech to our curator, Shaelynn Recollet, and to Art Gallery of Peterborough curator, Fynn Leitch, for her help with the installation of this work to our space.
A later date for the Artist Talk with Bonnie Devine will be announced.

To learn more about the exhibition and the artist, we also encourage visitors to check out the video of the artist talk, courtesy of the Art Gallery of Peterborough (recorded 2016), below.