Garry Sanipass | Masks | Virtual Exhibition

Garry Sanipass is a valued contributor to our most recent print issue, Psyche. His article, “The Journey from Left to Right,” is a compelling first-person narrative of the ceremonial experience of the Sun Dance ceremony. It is an accompaniment to his collection Masks, which was first exhibited at la galerie d’art Marie Hélène Allain in Bouctouche, NB. View the complete series below, including excerpts from his article, offering hints of meaning amidst deep visuals from within Garry’s mind.

If you are intrigued, we would love for you to read the full story on Page 76 of Issue 11 Psyche, available to be safely shipped to your home in full-vibrancy print or explored digitally on a Pay What You Can basis.

I feel naked as people begin to fill the gallery. These images that were in my head are now hanging on the walls. Why did I do this? Now everyone can see. “I feel like throwing up,” I tell the gallery director. The sounds of my words seem to amplify and reverberate in the corners of the gallery. With my artwork hanging all around me, I am standing in my own mind and inviting people in. So vulnerable.

This collection of work, Masks, is organized to represent the mind and to demonstrate how each hemisphere sees the world. The story starts with “Similacrum,” a portrait of myself in front of a mirror, a recurrent reflection symbolic of a journey deeper, where I travel from the left side of the brain to the right.

In “Left Brain, The Self, Past and Future,” I examine myself from my left brain. I focus on the details of who I am. I’m Mi’kmaq, so I include Mi’kmaq motifs, which I compare to binary, a language of mathematical equations.

In “Deconditioning H+,” I’m taking off my mask, killing the ego. This piece is the transition from left to right brain.

I was in a Sun Dance ceremony. . . On the third day you are very close to death, and so that is when the Hyoka dancers enter the Sun Dance grounds.

In the Sun Dance ceremony, Hyokas are people disguised from head to toe, representing a very mischievous spirit.

They represent the negative to the positive; the shadow to the light.

My interpretation is that he lives in the blind spot on the opposite side of the canvas. In the largest painting, “Surrendering,” the Hyoka spirit is right up in my face.

Now, we are immersed totally in the right side of the brain.

When you are free from your body, you are enormous.

Without filters of language and time, the Universe looks very different.

Language is too slow. There is instant communication.

Now it is time to return to flesh, to an equilibrium between the left and right, to the messiness of human life. The Sun Dance ceremony ends as we return from the dead. I put my mask back on.

With my artwork hanging all around me, I am standing in my own mind and inviting people in.

• Garry Sanipass, Mi’kmaq Artist & Contributor to CreatedHere Magazine Issue 11 Psyche