Billboard on Shaw co-presented by Native Women in the Arts and Critical Distance in partnership with Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival and Partners in Art, featuring Shiibaashka’igan: Honouring the Sacred Jingle Dress by Nadya Kwandibens.
This outdoor component of the exhibition Materialized presents an image by newly-appointed Toronto Photo Laureate Nadya Kwandibens. Photographed at the Naotkamegwanning roundhouse, the portrait depicts three Anishinaabekwewag sharing a candid moment of laughter, subverting the “stoic Indian” trope that characterizes historical portraits by non-Indigenous photographers. It is said that laughter is medicine—this image brings together that energy with the healing power of the jingle dress.
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Featuring works by Joi T. Arcand, Celeste Pedri-Spade and Catherine Blackburn, with a public art billboard by Nadya Kwandibens
Curated by Ariel Smith
Core Exhibition at the 2022 Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival
Opening reception
Friday, April 21, 6 to 8 pm
Artist Panel
Saturday, April 22 from 1 to 3pm at Urbanspace Gallery
Native Women in the Arts and Critical Distance Centre for Curators are pleased to present Materialized in partnership with Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival and Partners in Art.
Combining portrait photography with elements from adornment arts, textiles, sculpture, and customary Indigenous art practices, Materialized examines themes of intergenerational memory, familial narrative, and decolonization. By using their craft to reclaim portraiture as a form of self-expression and self-determination, each artist resists the colonial metanarratives contained in settler-made images of Indigenous subjects.
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