Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun Lets’lo:tseltun
Home: Vancouver, British Columbia
Title: Self Portrait
Media: Acrylic on canvas
Dimensions: 158 x 102 cm
Website: lawrencepaulyuxweluptun.com
Instagram: @yuxweluptun
ARTIST STATEMENT
Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun Lets’lo:tseltun’s artistic practice takes an interdisciplinary approach to his experience with the politics of national identity and the importance of Indigenous perspectives. Influential as both artist and activist, Yuxweluptuns’ works can be brutal critiques of issues such as land title, residential schools, and the destruction of the environment, making him a pivotal voice in contemporary art. Self-Portrait (2024) is an example of his skillfull play with traditional Northwest Coast formline and works challenging today’s Western society with identity deeply rooted in tradition and culture.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Of Cowichan (Hul’q’umi’num Coast Salish) and Okanagan (Syilx) descent, Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun (b.1957) is one of the most outspoken and influential contemporary artists in Canada today. Yuxweluptun presents his ideas through hard-hitting, polemical, but also playful artworks that now span a forty year career. Yuxweluptuns’ works can be brutal critiques of issues such as land title, residential schools, and the destruction of the environment, making him a pivotal voice in contemporary art. He lives and works on unceded, traditional and ancestral xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) territories.
The artist has participated in more than 25 pivotal exhibitions at venues like the Tate Modern (2024, London, United Kingdom), Heard Museum (2023, Phoenix, AZ), Philbrook Museum of Art (2023, Tulsa, OK), Eiteljorg Museum (2022 Indianapolis, Indiana), the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (2023, Berlin, Germany), Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC), Indigenous Art Collection (2021-2023, Sussex Courtyards in Ottawa, ON), McMichael Canadian Art Collection (2021, Ontario), Montreal Museum of Fine Art (2020, 2021, Montreal, QB), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (2018-2020, Bentonville, Arkansas), SITE Santa Fe (2018, New Mexico), the Art Gallery of Ontario (2017, Toronto), the Vancouver Art Gallery (1997, 2005, 2006, 2011, 2020), the National Gallery of Canada (2013, 2014, Ottawa, Ontario) and the Banff Centre for the Arts (2003, Alberta). In 2016, the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia mounted a major 30-year survey of his work, titled Unceded Territories.