Among a bustling Soho, New York, and along the cobblestone streets lining hubs of fashion and art alike, the 47 Canal Gallery hosts a new exhibition from Native American visual artist Jay Carrier. Carrier’s latest exhibition, titled ‘Other Side of the River,’ features a collection of abstract, mixed medium paintings that highlight and reflect the landscapes, rivers, and waterfalls of Carrier’s hometown in Niagara Falls, New York, and the land's deep-rooted history.

On view through February 15, the exhibition features works of Carrier’s dating back to the 2000s, depicts abstract landscapes that mix the mediums of paint and natural materials from the place he calls home. Alongside Carrier's paintings, there is a published conversation between Carrier and fellow artist G. Peter Jemison reflecting on the foundations of the Native art scene surrounding Niagara Falls. As a whole, the exhibition acts as a beautiful juxtaposition to the urban, concrete kingdom in which the exhibition lies 

‘Other Side of the River’ celebrates Carrier's return to 47 Canal and his re-entry into New York's exhibition world, his last solo show dating back to 2006. However, his involvement in the arts community goes all the way back to the 80s in Niagara Falls, with his introduction into the art world being at the Native American Center for the Living Arts. There, Carrier became enveloped in the Indigenous art world and bonded with fellow artists, including G. Peter Jemison and Oren Lyons. In the following years, Carrier attended college at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, as he became increasingly engrossed by the medium, specifically painting, with a passion continuing on and on, finally culminating in this solo exhibition.

Carrier’s work fuses together modernity and the past, specifically exploring his identity and experiences as a Native American of Onondaga and Tuscarora descent. Each of the paintings also highlights the importance of Carrier’s birthplace, the Six Nations Reservation in Ontario. They feature his heritage, the history, and the lost stories of those who had traversed the falls, rivers, and forests before him. His use of mixed media includes the use of split panels, borders, and various physical degrees of separation.

The title ‘Other Side of the River’ references a physical crossing between the borders of the United States and Canada, two rivers, the Niagara and Grand, for some is viewed as a concrete degree of separation and singular border, but to Carrier and his Native American lineage, it is viewed as more of a transitional sculpture from mother nature. It’s a crossing that Carrier and his family used to come to the United States, to Niagara. The crossing, the rivers, and the gorges of the region that marked Carrier’s upbringing, which can both serve as an end and as a beginning to a journey, is visually represented by intentional asymmetrical shapes and depictions of some works being split in half.

Whether it’s his incorporation of pieces of the landscape, including leaves and shells, or it’s the intertwining of historical and personal events that occurred on the same grounds, the same dirt, and the same rivers, Carrier’s use of an abstract, more contemporary style of art to portray the past, specifically stories within Indigenous culture is something that transcends time and physicality. The works contain stories, experiences, pieces of Indigenous cultures, and personal memories of Carrier’s upbringing. Although he is highlighting a personal, physical place that is conducive to these concepts, he proves that experiences and landscapes can be transformed and preserved in ways so that others can grasp the beauty and detail, even if the viewer has never stepped foot in the places that Carrier is depicting.