“Silent witnesses.”

That’s how artist Carey Newman describes the hundreds of objects that comprise his latest work, The Witness Blanket.

 The digital rendering of the entire 12 meter wide Witness Blanket (provided by witnessblanket.ca)

 

Something between a mosaic and a quilt, the 12-metre-long piece starts its 6-month stay at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights on Dec. 15.

The Witness Blanket is an expression of the emotional reality that residential schools have played in Canada over the last century and the hope of reconciliation that has started in the last few years.

Julia Peristerakis is a researcher and curator for Indigenous content at the museum and said the piece is a perfect fit for the museum’s mandate.

“This piece is also meant to be an expression of reconciliation,” said Peristerakis. “And we see our role in that occurring through dialogue, through being a centre for education, through encouraging all Canadians to engage with that history and this blanket really holds pieces of that history.”

Newman and his team travelled more than 200,000 kilometers around Canada and visited 77 sites and former schools to collect the pieces that make up The Witness Blanket.

 

This map sits on a wall near The Witness Blanket and every red mark shows a location for one of the pieces used in its creation.

 

All the pieces are mounted together with hundreds of documents and pictures that have been screened onto cedar blocks. The idea was inspired by a small stool of Newman’s, small wood pieces joined with brass to create a collapsible frame.

“When visitors come and engage with those pieces – which you really can do, it’s very tactile – visitors are bearing witness to those experiences,” said Peristerakis.

The project was very personal for Newman. His father is a survivor of residential schools.

“I knew it had impacted our relationship and I knew very little about his personal experience there,” Newman said. “So I kind of learned about what he had been through through the stories of others and then I started to learn more about his personal history because he started to talk about it.”

 

More than 800 pieces make up The Witness Blanket including locks of hair, used skates, and hundreds of documents and photos screened onto cedar planks.

 

Newman said it was like seeing a weight lifted off his father’s shoulders.

“I’ve learned an awful lot in the last couple years. I thought when I started this that I was doing something that I was going to give to the world, and it turned out that I was the one who was given something,” said Newman. “What I got was a deeper understanding of my father. It opened my heart and it really changed me as a person, to do this.”

Many of the objects featured in the blanket have been donated from residential school survivors or their families. Though many pieces have immense emotional value to them, Newman pointed out why the painting in the blanket’s centre is important to him.

“That painting was given to us by the family of Art Thompson, one of the original school survivors who took his case before the Supreme Court of Canada. He painted it when he was around nine years old at a residential school. I was very excited when his family offered it up to be part of The Witness Blanket.”

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights has created a few smaller exhibits to supplement the blanket, including a map showing every location across Canada Newman’s team found a piece, and a word cloud based on input from attendees and how the project has impacted them. The Witness Blanket will be on display until June.