Counternarratives: Watercolour Paintings By Archibald Fairbairn

Historic record or cultural appropriation? Colonial gaze or post-colonial re-evaluation Watercolour paintings by the late South Africa–born, Vancouver Island–based artist Archibald Fairbairn (1888-1979) depict First Nations villages and totem poles on Haida Gwaii and in the Skeena and Bulkley valleys. Based on sketching trips undertaken in the 1930s and ’40s and executed in the English watercolour tradition, Fairbairn’s images are interpreted through a range of contemporary Indigenous voices.