Billboards

2014

Photographic prints on 23 billboards in seven cities across Canada

“As a whole, Indian Candy uncovers truths and performs as a provisional archive of Aboriginal imagery seen through the lens of colonialism.

Claxton has radically altered these source materials—sometimes by adding vibrant text or shifting the colouration to highly saturated hues of pink, turquoise, and purple—enlarging the images to a scale that exaggerates the pixelization. Such transformations serve to draw these historic images into the present, allowing them to be examined with fresh eyes. Realized as a series of billboards in Toronto and six cities across Canada, the authenticity of these lush and seductive images gives way to alignments with advertising and commodification, highlighting how Indigenous iconography has been consumed by popular culture.”

— By Bonnie Rubenstein for Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival