In Dialogue

Raymond Boisjoly
Raymond Boisjoly (b. 1981) is an Indigenous artist of Haida and Québécois descent who lives and works in Vancouver. In 2008 he received his MFA at the University of British Columbia, having completed his BFA from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2006, and he is now represented by Catriona Jeffries Gallery. Boisjoly is at the forefront of an emerging strain of thinking about how Indigenous artistic, cultural and political histories can inform contemporary practice.

Raven Davis
Raven Davis is an Indigenous, mixed race, 2-Spirit multidisciplinary artist, curator and activist from the Anishinaabek (Ojibwa) Nation in Manitoba. Born and raised in Tkaronto (Toronto) and currently splitting time working between K’jipuktuk (Halifax) and Tkaronto. Raven blends narratives of colonization, race, gender, erotica, their 2-Spirit identity and the Anishinaabemowin language and culture into a variety of contemporary art forms. Raven is also a proud parent to 3 sons.

David Garneau
David Garneau (Métis) is Associate Professor of Visual Arts at the University of Regina.

His practice includes painting, drawing, performance art, video, curation, and critical writing. He recently co-curated (with Michelle LaVallee) Moving Forward, Never Forgetting, an exhibition concerning the legacies of Indian Residential Schools, other forms of aggressive assimilation, and (re)conciliation, at the Mackenzie Art Gallery in Regina, and With Secrecy and Despatch (with Tess Allas), an international exhibition about massacres of Indigenous people, and memorialization, for the Campbelltown Art Centre, Sydney, Australia. Garneau has given talks in Australia, the United States, and throughout Canada. He is currently working on curatorial projects in Sydney, New York, and South Africa; is part of a five-year, SSHRC funded, curatorial research project, “Creative Conciliation;” and is working on two public art projects in Edmonton. His paintings are in numerous public and private collections.

Carola Grahn
Carola Grahn (b. 1982) is a Visual artist of Sami and Swedish decent, based in New York and Sápmi. Grahn works primarily with materializations of text, installation strategies and sculptural media in long going projects. Often leaning towards the conceptual, her work focuses on structures of power and social constructions, primarily in relation to ethnicity and gender. Her work has been shown at Tråante, 2017 (Nor), Havremagasinet, 2016 (Swe), Art Centre KulttuuriKauppila, 2016 (Fin), Bildmuseet i Umeå (Swe), 2014, Galleri Jinsun i Seoul, 2014 (South Korea), Centrum för Fotografi, Stockholm (Swe), 2013 och Malmö Konsthall, 2013 (Swe). She is also the current guest editor of Hjärnstorm and has published the novel Lo & Professorn 2013. Grahn’s work is represented in the Swedish Art Council’s collection.

Nicole Kelly Westman
Nicole Kelly Westman is a visual artist of Métis and Icelandic descent. She grew up in a supportive home with strong-willed parents—her mother, a considerate woman with inventive creativity, and her father, an anonymous feminist. Her work culls from these formative years for insight and inspiration.

Creating work that exists beyond the binaries of a specific medium, Westman finds inspiration through the plumbing of archives and through deep research. She has had the pleasure and privilege to be curated into exhibitions by remarkably supportive curators including: Ginger Carlson, John Hampton, Peta Rake, Leila Timmins, Kristy Trinier, and cheyanne turions. Westman holds a BFA from Emily Carr University and is the current Director of Stride Gallery, Calgary.

Duane Linklater
Duane Linklater is Omaskêko Ininiwak from Moose Cree First Nation and was born in 1976. He is currently based in North Bay, Ontario. He attended the Milton Avery Graduate School of Arts at Bard College in upstate New York, USA, completing his Master of Fine Arts in Film and Video.

Tanya Lukin-Linklater
Tanya Lukin Linklater's performance collaborations, videos, and installations have been exhibited nationally and internationally. She is compelled by relationships between bodies, histories, poetry, pedagogy, Indigenous conceptual spaces, Indigenous languages, and institutions. Her work has been exhibited and performed at EFA Project Space + Performa, NYC, Museum of Contemporary Art Santiago, Chilé, SBC Gallery, Montreal, Western Front, Vancouver, Images Festival + Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto, Remai Modern, Saskatoon, Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton, and elsewhere. In 2016 she presented He was a poet and he taught us how to react and become this poetry, Parts 1 and 2 at La Biennale de Montréal - Le Grand Balcon curated by Philippe Pirotte. In 2017 she was the inaugural artist in residence at All My Relations Arts in the American Indian Cultural Corridor, Minneapolis. Her poetry and essays have been published in C Magazine, BlackFlash Magazine, Yellow Medicine Review, Taos International Journal of Poetry and Art, Drunken Boat, and in publications by Kitchener/Waterloo Art Gallery, Access Gallery, Western Front, and McLaren Art Centre. Tanya studied at University of Alberta (M.Ed.) and Stanford University (A.B. Honours). She is a member of Wood Land School. She originates from the Native Villages of Afognak and Port Lions in southern Alaska and is based in northern Ontario, Canada.

Amy Malbeuf
Amy Malbeuf is a Métis visual artist from Rich Lake, Alberta. Through utilizing mediums such as caribou hair tufting, beadwork, installation, performance, and video Malbeuf explores notions of identity, place, language, and ecology. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally in over forty shows at such venues as Art Mûr, Montréal, Winnipeg Art Gallery; Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton; Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe; and Pataka Art + Museum, Porirua, New Zealand. Malbeuf has participated in many international artist residencies including at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, (AUS); The Banff Centre; The Labrador Research Institute; and Santa Fe Art Institute (US). She holds a MFA in Visual Art from the University of British Columbia Okanagan. Malbeuf has been the recipient of such honours as the 2016 Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Emerging Artist Award, the 2016 William and Meredith Saunderson Prize for Emerging Artists in Canada from the Hnatyshyn Foundation, a 2017 REVEAL award from the Hnatyshyn Foundation and was long listed for the 2017 Sobey Art Award.

Nadia Myre
Nadia Myre is a visual artist from Quebec and an Algonquin member of the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation.  For over a decade, her multi-disciplinary practice has been inspired by participant involvement as well as recurring themes of identity, language, longing and loss.  Myre is a graduate from Camosun College (1995), Emily Carr (1997), and Concordia University (MFA, 2002), and a recipient of numerous grants and awards, notably: Sobey Art Award (2014), Pratt & Whitney Canada’s ‘Les Elles de l’art for the Conseil des arts de Montréal(2011), Quebec Arts Council’s Prix à la création artistique pour la region des Laurentides (2009), and a Fellowship from the Eiteljorg Museum (2003). Recent solo exhibitions include Oraison/Orison (OBORO, Montreal), Needleworks (McLaren Art Centre, Barrie, Ontario), Nadia Myre: Symbology (Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa) and Skin Tissue––as part of Hides: Skin as Material and Metaphor, (National Museum of American Indian, New York, NY).  Her work The Scar Project was selected for both the 2011 Montréal Biennale and 2012 Sydney Biennial.  Recent group exhibitions include Formes et Paroles (Gorée, Senegal), 2014 Shanghai Biennale: Social Factory (Power Station of Art, Shanghai, P.R.C), 2014 Sobey Art Award Exhibition, (Winnipeg Art Gallery, Winnipeg), Sakahàn (National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa), Water Diary (FRAC Haute-Normandie, Sotteville-lès-Rouen, FR), L’image Rôde (Le Fresnoy, FR), Changing Hands 3 (Museum of Art and Design, New York, NY), Pour une république des rêves (CRAC Alsace - Centre Rhénan d’Art Contemporain, Altkirch, FR), Time, Le temp du dessin (Ensemble Poirel, Nancy, France), Vantage Point: The Contemporary Native Art Collection (National Museum of American Indian National Mall, Washington, DC), It Is What It Is (National Gallery of Canada), Femmes Artistes. L’éclatement des frontières 1965-2000 (Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, QC).  Her work has received accolades from the New York Times, Le Monde, The Washington Post, Le Devoir, and has been featured in ARTnews, American Craft Magazine, ETC, Parachute, Canadian Art, C Magazine, Monopol, and ESSE.  Myre’s work is held by corporate and public collections including: MacKenzie Art Gallery, City of Ottawa, Canada Council Art Bank, National Gallery of Canada, Musée de la civilization (Québec), Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec, Bibliothèque et archives nationales du Québec, National Museum of American Indian, and Fonds Regional d’Art Contemporain de Lorraine in France.  Works may be found on permanent exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Canadian Museum of History and the National Gallery of Canada.

Peter Morin
Peter Morin is a performance artist, curator and writer from the Tahltan Nation.  In his artistic practice, along with his curatorial work, Morin investigates the impact sites that occur when Indigenous cultural-based practices and western settler colonialism collide. In 2016, Morin received the Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Award for Mid-Career Artist.  Morin has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions including Team Diversity Bannock and the World’s Largest Bannock attempt (2005); 12 Making Objects AKA First Nations DADA (12 Indigenous Interventions) (2009); Peter Morin's Museum (2011); Peter Morin’s Ceremony Experiments 1 through 8 Circle (2013). In addition to his art making and performance practice, Morin has curated exhibitions at the Museum of Anthropology, Western Front, Bill Reid Gallery, and Yukon Art Centre. Morin joined the Visual and Aboriginal Arts Faculty at Brandon University in 2014. 

Native Art Department International
(Maria Hupfield and Jason Lujan)
Native Art Department International is a collaborative project by artists Maria Hupfield and Jason Lujan that focuses on the circulation of art in international contexts to function as an emancipation from identity-based artwork.

Based in Brooklyn New York Maria Hupfield is from Canada and a member of Wasauksing First Nation, Ontario. A 2014 recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painting and Sculpture Grant and the AIM residency at the Bronx Museum Maria's recent solo exhibitions include The One Who Keeps On Giving, The Power Plant, Toronto; MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina; Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, Montréal. She has participated in group exhibitions and performances at SITE Santa Fe Biennial; Campo dei Gesuiti, Venice; Aboriginal Art Centre, Ottawa; Vox Populi, Philadelphia; Musée d'art contemporain des Laurentides, Saint Jérôme; North Native Museum (NONAM), Zurich; and Vancouver Art Gallery.

Jason Lujan is originally from Marfa, Texas and has lived in New York City since 2001. Previous exhibitions and performances include the Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ; the National Museum of the American Indian, NY, NY; the Curibita Biennial in Brazil; Continental de Artes Indígenas Contemporáneas at the Museo Nacional de Culturas Populares, Mexico City; Cementa Contemporary Arts Festival in Kandos, Australia, the solo installation, Summer Burial, at the Museum of Contemporary Native Art in Santa Fe, and Crosslines at the Smithsonian Arts & Industries building Washington D.C. Jason occasionally curates and co-organizes exhibitions in New York City such as Zines Plus and the World of ABC No Rio at the New York Center for Book Arts and Fail-Safe at Bullet Space Gallery.

Krista Belle Stewart
Krista Belle Stewart’s work engages the complexities of intention and interpretation made possible by archival material. Her work approaches mediation and storytelling to unfold the interplay between personal and institutional history. Stewart’s recent exhibition Motion and Moment Always at the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (2015) marked the first solo exhibition of her work and  the culmination of fall 2014 residencies at the Nisga’a Museum and Western Front comprising new works developed in Nisga’a and at her ancestral home in Douglas Lake, BC. Her work Seraphine, Seraphine, a two- channel video installation was exhibited at Mercer Union, Toronto (2015) in collaboration with the 28th Images Festival. She has exhibited in group shows including Where Does it Hurt?, Artspeak, Vancouver (2014), Music from the New Wilderness, Western Front, Vancouver (2014), and Fiction/Nonfiction, Esker Foundation, Calgary (2013). Stewart holds a BFA from Emily Carr University and is an MFA graduate from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College in upstate New York. She is a member of the Upper Nicola Band of the Okanagan Nation, and lives and works in Vancouver and Brooklyn.

John Hampton
John G. Hampton is a curator and artist currently living in Treaty 2 territory, Manitoba. He is the Executive Director of the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba and Adjunct Curator at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto. He holds a Masters of Visual Studies – Curatorial Studies (2014) from the University of Toronto, and a BA in Visual Arts (2009) from the University of Regina. He is the former Artistic Director of Trinity Square Video (2013-2016) and Curator at Neutral Ground Contemporary Art Forum (2010-2013). He currently sits on the board of directors for the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective and the Whitehead Foundation, and is a member of the Canadian Art Museum Directors Organization and the Aboriginal Education Council for OCAD University. He is a citizen of Canada, the United States, and the Chickasaw Nation.