Coming Home To is exhibited on the King Edward Canada Line Station from September 2023 - June 2024.
Robin Robert’s Coming Home To, showing on the windows of the Canada Line King Edward Station until March 15, 2024, depicts a pantheon of animals drawn in northern Haida style Formline. The inspiration for the bentwood box frontlet approach came from the artist sketching while listening to Aboriginal Studies professors speak about the Indian Act, the creation of reserves and residential schools. He found himself continually drawing boxes that are representative of attempts to confine or “box in” Indigeneity.
The work was created in three sections with the left and right windows depicting a bentwood box frontlet figure and a killer whale, representing the water realm. Placing the bentwood box figures on the outer panels was done so that the images are contained within that box. The center window depict from left to right, an eagle with a human figure (sky and earth realms), a Bear Mother story (earth realm), and a raven stealing the sun, with a salmon egg as the sun (sky and water realms).
This work is presented on translucent vinyl, in part to suggest stained glass windows and the history of religion related to both the artist’s family and the church’s role in the process of colonization.
Three of Robin’s grandparents went to residential school, with the fourth attending day-school. Due to Canadian attempts at erasure, there is a concept in the artist’s nation of “coming back home,” or “coming back home to our people, or our culture.” This work is in honour of that return. Robin reinforces that narrative with the depiction of the salmon, who is known for its arduous return journey, along with the Haida story of the mother bear – which is itself, a story of transformation and returning home.