In ‘loving homage’ to Indigenous resistance, Carrier Wit’at artist creates textile pieces with a punk edge

This story originally appeared in Megaphone and appears here with permission and light edits.

---

Whess Harman was never a bad kid. The worst thing he could think of was sneaking out to go to the movies. 

“Like I snuck out to go see the Lord of the Rings,” he confesses. “So my version of ‘bad kid’ was so nerdy.”

Harman thinks young people are given a bad rep. He remembers being bullied at school, before one day it stopped and he didn’t know why. Ten years later, he found out his cousin, who is barely older than Harman, beat up all the bullies for him. His cousin was the “bad kid,” says Harman. “But I always felt like it was well intended.”

“Bad Kids” is the title of Harman’s new art piece, a blanket, currently on view at the Bill Reid Gallery on xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ territories. His work is part of XIÁM, a larger exhibition that combines traditional storytelling and comics. XIÁM in the SENĆOŦEN language means “to tell stories, specifically fictional or traditional stories.”

The first-floor exhibition is filled with comic art from five Indigenous artists, Harman (Carrier Wit’at), Jordanna George (T’Sou-ke), Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas (Haida), Gord Hill (Kwakwaka’wakw), and Cole Pauls (Tahltan). The exhibition is curated by Jordanna George.

While viewers are met with an array of hand drawn and digital comic art interpretations, Harman’s textile installation (melton wool, embroidery thread, canvas, acrylic paint, plastic buttons, bone beads, glass beads, grommets) with his comic art hand-painted inside wing-shaped panels, is the most radical.

Harman, who is primarily a text-based artist, says he wanted to contribute something that felt tangible. “I couldn’t help putting my curator hat on and thinking about how I could break up the wall.” 

Harman is the curator at grunt gallery on East 2nd Avenue. He says it can be hard to switch off the curatorial part of his brain when working as an artist for an exhibition space. 

The blanket, with its bold wings and dancing characters, tells you a lot about Harman. He’s ambitious and loves movement. He also loves going to punk shows. “So I always want to capture that feeling as best I can,” he said. “That feeling of being pummeled.”

Since Harman’s first blanket project in 2020, he’s become “obsessed” with blankets, he says. Each piece stems from, and has become part of the Potlatch Punk series Harman is known for — a collection of modified thrifted jackets that offer a “loving homage” to acts of resistance against the Potlatch Ban. 

While comics have only recently been accepted as a more sophisticated form of art, they have a history of acting as a tool for people on the fringes of society to share news, education, lived experiences, or a laugh. 

This is what Harman is sharing with his blanket and other pieces. He says they’re not meant to be regalia, but to communicate a message. 

It’s important to Harman that they’re worn. “I want that sense of movement,” he says. “But it’s hard to do that when you don’t have dancers and songs and things to do with that.” 

Harman would like to one day have enough blankets and jackets that he can have a ceremony with them and have them danced in. “That’s my ultimate goal,” he says.

Harman, whose home community is Fort Babine, is the only person in his family that lives in the city. “Part of making these blankets is that the blankets feel more like home to me,” he says.

 “And the intention is always for them to eventually go home.” 

XIÁM is on view at the Bill Reid Gallery until May 19.