Zora Neale Hurston said, “there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you.”* Reclaiming Our Narrative features the work of three emerging artists who examine their personal truths. By utilizing a visual language to explore these narratives, they were able to tell their stories when words have failed to express them.

In their final year at Brandon University, in the IshKaabatens Waasa Gaa Inaabateg Department of Visual Arts, these artists embarked on solo expeditions, each conceiving of and building a body of work that externalized internal truths. Faith Rae explores the individual experience of coming out. The artist’s movements are recorded in the art objects–action paintings examining shame and celebrates difference by communicating a language of queer acceptance in her art. Conversely, Nicole Brasseur’s installation addresses a history of silence. Her physical and psychological dis-ease from a life of chronic pain is conveyed through soiled forms, articulating a personal language, for which she is still learning the words. Carly Morrisseau frames the forms of N-dialect cree lettering with illustrations pulled from their memory, memorializing the process of language learning as a reclamation of culture, and as a projection of that culture into the future: We’re Still Here.

Collectively, these artists have established that communication is not restricted to speaking, but individually channeling their narratives in a way that can be understood.

*Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road. An Autobiography, 1942YouTube Playlist of Exhibition