Inspirational message installed at TMU’s Recreation and Athletic Centre
TMU’s Athletics and Recreation department worked with Caroline Brown, an Emmy-award winning Anishinaabe artist, to create a panoramic installation for the RAC rotunda. Photo credit: Caroline Brown.
An expansive new art installation has been added to the north rotunda of TMU’s Recreation and Athletic Centre (RAC) with a significant message and connection to the university community: “Everything you think you need to be, you already are.”
The inspiring words are those of Joanne Okimawininew Dallaire, Elder (Ke Shay Hayo) and senior advisor of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation at TMU. She says the words just came to her one day.
“I’m always trying to help myself and other people feel good about who they are,” Dallaire said. “We are raised in a culture that tells us whatever we’re doing is not quite enough… there has always been this underlying attitude of achievement. So I think it’s important to celebrate who we are [and] keep things in perspective.”
A motivating and affirming message
The installation is intended to inspire visitors to the RAC and help them to feel and think their best. Photo credit: Caroline Brown.
Dallaire, who had been using the “everything you think you need to be, you already are” phrase in her email signature for some time, was approached in 2020 by members of an advisory committee responsible for a renovation project in the RAC during the pandemic shutdown.
“The group knew they wanted students to return to a rejuvenated space and be met each day with a motivating and affirming message as part of the design,” said Andrew Pettit, director of recreation, equity & active well-being in TMU’s Athletics & Recreation department. Dallaire’s words resonated so deeply that the advisory group wanted them to be displayed in a more prominent location within the building for everyone who visits to see.
“Our aim is to create a safe and welcoming recreation community, supporting our students to (re)connect with their bodies on healthier terms, and for each to experience how it feels when their bodies and minds are enriched and enlivened by movement,” added Pettit.
Creating something meaningful
On a practical level, Brown points out that the sun in the east and the moon in the west have been placed as way-finding markers that will help orient people in the space. Photo credit: Caroline Brown.
Caroline Brown, Teme-Augama Anishinabai (People of the Deep Water), Whitebear family, Loon clan and a member of Temagami First Nation, previously worked with Athletics and Recreation on the First Nations Immersive Space in the RAC’s cardio and strength circuit room. She was asked to bring Dallaire’s words to life via an artistic interpretation that could be displayed in the rotunda.
“Having Joanne’s thoughts throughout the creative development was important. It was encouraging to know that we were working in a collaborative way to create something meaningful,” she said.
Brown is a commercial graphic artist, an Indigenous painter and beadwork artist. She blended disciplines while creating the circular art installation that features people, nature and animals very prominently.
She explains: two people face each other in reflection, with reassurance. Are they a reflection of someone looking within or two people looking at each other? They lead us with a Wolf Clan Paw Print design on their shoulders, a nod to the Wolf Clan, of which Dallaire is a member.
From left to right the first words we see are in Cree, entwined in the left person’s hair, and Cree Syllabics within the beaded sun and then the English words, wrapped in the right person’s hair, “everything you think you need to be, you already are.” The skylight brings changing natural light onto the images, with drifting leaf shadows and birds flying overhead.
“The physical space added to the symbolism,” said Brown. “The circle holds everything together with continuity; sunrise to moonrise, day into night, moon and stars, sun and clouds, earth, water and sky - heron, deer, fish and loon - nature in harmony, motion and stillness. Your nature is perfect just the way you are.”
When asked what it meant to see the artistic interpretation of her words, Dallaire said she was in awe. “She just gets it,” Dallaire said of Brown’s piece. “And she was able to bring in a lot of Indigenous teachings.”
Both Brown and Dallaire hope the sweeping installation brings visitors of the RAC a sense of peace and reassurance. “You are exactly who you are supposed to be and exactly where you are supposed to be,” Dallaire reminds us.
For more information on TMU Recreation and the RAC, visit the website.