Beam was a First Nations (Ojibwe) painter and mixed-media artist. He used photography, collage, archival images, and photo-transfer techniques to explore Anishinaabe experiences, histories, and traditions, as well as to critique colonialism and unravel Western assumptions. In 1986, the National Gallery of Canada purchased his work The North American Iceberg, 1985. It was the first contemporary artwork by an Indigenous artist to be collected by the institution.

Image: Carl Beam, The North American Iceberg, 1985, acrylic, photo-serigraph, and graphite on Plexiglas, 213.6 x 374.1 cm, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. © Estate of Carl Beam / CARCC Ottawa 2023.

For further reading, see:

Ernst, Stacy A. “Going Beyond the Archival Grid: Carl Beam and Greg Curnoe’s Decolonization of a Colonizing Space.” World Art 6, no. 1 (2016): 85–102.

Hill, Greg. Carl Beam: The Poetics of Being. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2010.