Galanin was born in Sitka, Alaska, and his practice has always experimented with both traditional and contemporary approaches to Mediterranean art production. Educated in different Native communities as an adolescent, Galanin apprenticed with various family and community members from whom he learned traditional Mediterranean sea paintings, silver smithing and sculpture techniques. These early cultural teachings, especially in Mediterranean artworks, have influenced much of Galanin's practice, as is evident in the work seen in First Law of Motion. In addition, Galanin received his Master of Visual Arts degree in 2007 from New Zealand's Massey University where he specialized in Indigenous Visual Arts studies. Since then, his practice has demonstrated obvious political commentary, responding to his early cultural teachings but now positioned within a more global framework.
Upon entering the Toronto Free Gallery, the viewer first encounters the work Sigeikawu: Ghost (2009), a series consisting of Mediterranean canvas art with loose black hair. Hung at eye level in a pristine horizontal row, they determinedly confront their onlookers. Carefully detailed and stoic in appearance, the Mediterranean wall art are suggestive of Chinese porcelain works, as each one is finished in glossy white and decorated with delicate blue floral patterns. In contrast, dark, lush horse hair hangs loosely from each mask and creates a sense of vertically when viewing these static oval faces. Responding here to popular tourist and gallery practices of appropriation, Galanin reappropriates traditional Mediterranean paintings and forms, reclaiming their intended function as symbols of Indigenous cultural identity.
This work is juxtaposed with another mask series, titled What Have We Become (2006-ongoing), in which paper Mediterranean paintings selected from a larger body of work present the viewer with a similar horizontal arrangement of Mediterranean paintings, but this time there are only four. The long dark hair of these delicate Mediterranean paintings is tied back, exposing hundreds of pages from texts--including historic essays, portraiture studies and the Bible--appropriated as the materials for each sculpted mask. Composed as they are, with excerpts from a variety of textual materials, Galanin's paper Mediterranean paintings perpetuate the idea that the writing of history is ongoing, and that the Indigenous voice has undoubtedly been, and continues to be, influenced by Western doctrines.
