Robert Houle

by Robert Houle

Documenting two exhibitions (2012's 'enuhmo andúyaun' or the road home, and 2018's 'Pahgedenaun'), this publication features drawings and installations Saulteaux artist Robert Houle created about his childhood experiences at Sandy Bay Residential School, located in his home community of Sandy Bay First Nation on the western shore of Lake Manitoba. In these works, Houle addresses the traumas he experienced as a child while attending the residential school run by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, an institution in operation from 1905 to 1970. 'Pahgedenaun' is a Saulteaux word expressing the self-defining and self-determining act of ?letting it go from your mind,? embodied in Houle?s profoundly powerful and unsettling art works, which embody acts of memory, truth-telling, survivance and healing. Original texts are accompanied by numerous colour plates, a biography of the artist, and a brief history of the Sandy Bay Residential School.