Rebecca Belmore
Fringe, 2007
Transparency in light-box
36 x 108 inches
Courtesy the artist

Rebecca Belmore often uses the body to address violence against First Nations people, especially women. The woman in Fringe assumes the same reclining pose as the beautiful odalisques depicted by nineteenth- and twentieth-century European artists, but bears an ugly slash from shoulder to hip. The thin rivulets of blood that run from the gash are composed of small red beads, a detail that evokes both Belmore's Anishinabe heritage and the trauma inflicted on indigenous peoples. Despite the graveness of the woman's injury, Belmore's Fringe is also about healing. The wound is not fatal; she has the strength to recover. But the scar will never disappear.