By Karin Cope 

Two Pansies, a collaborative exhibition installed at Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery during the fall of 2025, featured colourful, whimsical, and deeply serious eco-feminist dialogues in paint, sculpture, video, and performance by two emerging queer artists, Autumn Star and Shay Donovan. An expansive show filled with paired paintings of uncanny figures in luscious colours, performances in animal and flower costumes, and moving, human-sized snail, fish, bird, and spider sculptural forms, Two Pansies makes an argument that queer and trans bodily change is about more than “sex,” “gender,” or “human” morphologies and relationships. It is also about the beauty of emergence and the ways our relationships with one another and the non-human world inspire, move, reveal, and tether us in “laughter, whimsy, shame, and love,” as the Two Pansies video puts it.

Characterizing their show as a “tender archive” of “strange strangers” or emergent beings, artists Shay Donovan and Autumn Star speak of their work as an effort to help nascent forms they encounter while living and making “find their shape” and “come to be at home.” Costumed as lobsters, bees, owls, pansies, or jackalopes, they animate animal and plant stories they have “collected along the way.” Furnished with materials from their own homes and decorated with drafts of paintings found in the show, they also provide access to a domestic space or “home” for the Two Pansies in a side room of the gallery.

Across their performances, Donovan and Star centre care, humour, and fragmentary narrative as methodologies, engaging viewers in the intimate rhythms of a generous and multiple queer life. They also show how colour may function as both camouflage and highlight, offering expansive understandings of what painting is or could be and asking us to look and listen more closely to making and the living world as sources of new queer imaginings.

Full disclosure: As a director of the NSCAD MFA program during part of the time both Donovan and Star were enrolled, I know them well and visited their studios while they were developing this work. I met them in Kjipuktuk/Halifax in late November 2025 to discuss critical aspects of the exhibition.

KARIN COPE: Let’s talk about your title. It nods toward queer histories and iconographies, including the etymological history of the pansy, from its fifteenth-century roots in the French pensée to its early twentieth-century use as a term meaning “effeminate.” How did you find your title, and which came first, the characters or the title?

SHAY DONOVAN: The name for the show came first. Alongside the rich etymological history of the word, we really enjoyed reclaiming the word “pansy” from its modern usage and transforming it into these pansy characters. Because why can’t a being be effeminate and delicate but also powerful and formidable?

KC: Some of the work appears side by side, while other elements, like the film, the Birdfish sculpture, and the Pansies’ “home,” feel fully collaborative. How did your collaboration begin, and how is working together different from working alone? 

AUTUMN STAR: Shay and I have been close in proximity in our creative spaces for a few years now, so working together was a natural evolution. We met during our time in the MFA at NSCAD, where we were assigned studios next to each other. Early on, while I was making a giant snail sculpture, we learned that we both have a shared enthusiasm for bugs. I’ve never seen anyone’s eyes light up as much as Shay’s did while talking about cicadas, so we co-curated a group show called Swarm, all about the insights of insects. Two Pansies was another chance to combine some of our headspace to create things that I doubt either of us would have manifested alone.

KC: What is the role of the house, or “pansy safe space,” in relation to the film? You’ve described the show as a “tender archive.” How does the house function as a space of intimacy and care?

AS: The installation for the Pansies’ home functions as an invitation to enter a strange habitat and helped us explore tensions between interior and exterior in queer space. What is shown? What is concealed? I wonder about the fragility of queer archives and efforts at preservation. If you wanted to preserve a pansy for display, you would have to press it in glass, but that estranges its velvety textures and puts them at risk of shattering. A more private option might be pressing the flower between the pages of a book, but then who else gets to see it? The living room and the film are a living archive of the Two Pansies in this moment, filled with art, love, joy, and a gigantic Birdfish.

KC: There is great physicality in this work, from the human and more-than-human scale of the pieces to the gestural marks they record, the precarious balance of the sculptures, and the whole-body performances in the film. You also posit a merging of bodies, species, and genders, visible in the snail sculptures, the Birdfish, and the animal and plant characters in the film, as well as in the melding of plant, animal, mineral, and human forms in your paintings. Can you talk about the vision of the world these interlacings propose, why it matters to see the world, as Emily Dickinson would have it, “slant,” and what kinds of ecological care shape this work in terms of themes and materials?

AS: Using the whole body to create a piece as big or slightly larger than life takes a lot of endurance; we want that energy to bleed into the work. As for the merging of plants, animals, and spirited bodies, these conjoined hybrids show that it takes repeated hovering around the edge of something to get to know it and to see just how circular our connections to life are. And of course, as to materials, we’re recycling all the time! 

SD: I love the space between the slants, the little crevices we can carve out to make room for identity that isn’t one thing or the other. In the film, I moved from depicting entities through painting to embodying them on camera. I had to give myself permission to inhabit the character rather than act as a witness.

KC: Talk to me about colour and materials. Do they build worlds? You’ve described your process as helping these emergences find their shape. Is this queer birth?

AS: Colour is a guiding companion for me. It can be patient when figuring out a composition or rowdy and certain about where the eye should travel. Colours rubbing against each other create visual conversations. I feel like Shay and I have distinct palettes that speak a similar language with different accents.

SD: There comes a time when the material takes over and I’m no longer the conductor but a conduit. If I don’t let that switch happen, the piece feels unresolved. Colour in my paintings is mostly intuitive. Sometimes it comes from memory, but it helps build the world of the work. I imagine what’s happening out of frame as a continuation of what’s visible. Is that a queer birth? Maybe.

KC: In the video, you describe shared affects as “laughter, whimsy, shame, and love.” Why does this particular assemblage matter?

SD: Whimsy often gets mischaracterized as frivolous, but it can be a huge source of joy. We didn’t want to take ourselves too seriously, and letting whimsy guide some decisions left room to breathe and have fun. Laughter and whimsy feel internal, while shame and love are often projected from outside. Together, they feel like a common queer experience.

KC: How do you begin a project? How do you know you’re onto something?

AS: Sometimes a piece you think is legless ends up with three legs and six arms. Other times you think something is sturdy and it turns into a fish with wings. We tend to let our hands do the heavy lifting and let the concept follow. Embracing fluidity is important.

SD: It’s hard to tell when something starts walking on its own. Sometimes I don’t know until it’s already out the door and teaching me something.

For example, we’ve been asked a lot about the collaborative Birdfish. It was my first time working on a sculpture that large and alongside someone else. It was inspired by watching ospreys near Lunenburg catch fish. The way they carry fish, held forward and parallel to their bodies, looks almost as if the fish has wings. In a last embrace, the fish is thrust into a different realm. I wonder how they experience that brief hybridity and what it would look like for the fish to have control over that journey.

KC: What have you learned from working together? Would you do it again? What’s next?

SD & AS: This is just a start. We fuel each other with our ambition. It’s exciting to work alongside someone who shares the feeling that there is more to explore. There will be collaborations in our future, and this isn’t the last you’ll see of the Two Pansies.

The first thing you notice is the music, spilling out into the stairway and pulling visitors into a world shaped by movement. That sense of movement runs throughout It’s About Time: Dancing Black in Canada 1900–1970 and Now, a nationally touring exhibition at the Dalhousie Art Gallery from January to April 2026.

Curated by scholar, artist, and educator Seika Boye, It’s About Time is an archival exhibition that showcases the rich dance histories of Canada’s Black population. Using findings from recorded historical events and new research, Boye explores the power of dance as a form of expression, resistance, sacrifice, and cultural identity. 

“To date, the history of dance within Canada’s Black population is significantly underdocumented,” writes Boye in their artist statement. “Without it, we miss out on so much joy, agency, peaceful gathering en masse, resistance, artistic brilliance, and individual expression. Without it, we are incomplete in our self-knowledge, and so, our potential.”

PREPARATION AS DANCE

The dulcet tones of artists past and present pull you through the door and straight into a space reminiscent of a young adult’s bedroom. 

Clothes pile up in a corner—T-shirts, jackets, skirts, and other fabrics—seemingly tossed aside in the aftermath of a fashion montage you might see in a ’90s rom-com. Some bear Black Panther insignia, others are African kente; some fabrics are soft and diaphanous, others are black and metallic.

Beside the pile of clothes is a crisp white vanity, ready to serve the room’s occupant. A long black do-rag sits on a mannequin head, gemstones sparkling like the stars on the night out the occupant is preparing for. A tower of varied speakers sits in the other corner, filling the space with feel-good music as they get ready. A disco ball spins above, seeding its light across the textured ceiling. 

The three mixed media installations by kay macdonald, titled in this room—at the beginning of the night/at the end of the world, transport viewers into an intimate space where preparation becomes a ritual and the bedroom becomes a liminal space of expression and safety. Here, the act of getting ready becomes a dance of “what it takes to show up, and to be seen,” macdonald writes. 

Over the course of the exhibition, macdonald will periodically activate the space with a live performance, transforming the installation from still life to living ceremony. 

BLACKNESS AS PERFORMANCE

Stepping out of that bedroom, your attention is immediately captured by a bright red curtain to the right. 

Thick, red theatre curtains with carefully—almost reverently—placed pleats frame a painting, like curtains drawing closed after a show. In the centre, a dark-skinned Black woman rests after a dance of some kind. She is visibly tired, eyes downcast as she leans against her dressing table. Her red dancing shoes stand out in a sea of black, browns, and navy backstage. 

By Preston Pavlis and titled when the jig is up, when the act is finished, when the curtain descends, the link between Blackness and performance in this piece feels unavoidable. The dancer’s red shoes are a reference to a 1948 British film The Red Shoes, where a ballerina must choose between her love for dance and her life beyond the stage.  

For me, a Black viewer, the red shoes in the painting symbolize a lack of choice. Just like the protagonist in the film couldn’t remove the shoes, Pavlis’s dancer cannot shed her Blackness. She is forced to perform every day on the stage we call life, eyes critiquing her every move. In the mirror behind her, the reflection stares at the viewer in an accusatory gaze, full of both helplessness and quiet rage. 

Beside the dancer, a bunch of dried flowers rest on the table—a testament to how she has been unable to care for them, and herself. Tenderness, rest, the soft aspects of her life come second to the performance she must put on for the world. The painting is a moment of vulnerability, and the stage becomes a space where “endings, pressure and self-belief must be continually negotiated,” writes Pavlis. 

CELEBRATION AS LIBERATION

As you venture deeper into the exhibition, a spread of black-and-white photographs lines the walls on either side of the room.

On the right side is Allen D. Crooks’s Lose yourself to dance,most of which was photographed during a fiftieth-anniversary family celebration and vow renewal at the East Preston Recreation Centre. The photos pull you into a room full of joy, laughter, and celebration. Glistening suits and well-worn floors set the scene, as family members—old and young, anonymous and identified—strut their stuff, skirts swaying with the music, arms raised in jubilation. 

On the left side, a series of photographs that catch your eye are the Grange Road Dances. The photos depict scenes from social dances, house parties, concerts, and recitals in 1950s Canada. The black-and-white photos do nothing to dull the liveliness of the party. 

In one of the photographs, a crowd of Black youth dance together, happily moving to the beat of musicians, while at the perimeter, a group of white attendees look on, seemingly out of place. I couldn’t help but smile at the sight of unapologetic Black joy existing despite white discomfort. 

While both sides of the aisle depict different events, the theme is clear: Dance like no one’s watching. 

In a world where Blackness puts a target on your back, dance becomes a radical form of liberation. This was especially true in the 1950s, when social dances were one of the few sources for “positive images of Canada’s Black population,” the exhibition text explains.  

BLACK DANCE, DARK HISTORY

Moving through the gallery, it becomes clear that celebration is only one part of the story. Behind glass, objects from nineteenth-century minstrel shows sit uncomfortably still. A book on stage makeup is opened to instructions for racial caricature; beside it, a small tin of “Negro Black” face paint, with a detailed visual guide and colour palette to achieve the desired “ethnic complexions.”

A visitor’s voice cuts through the gallery: “People used to buy this?”

The answer, painfully, is yes.

These materials remind viewers that dance has also been used as a tool for ridicule and exclusion—a distortion of Black and racialized bodies designed to entertain through dehumanization. That this history exists alongside scenes of joy, ceremony, and resistance is not a contradiction but part of the exhibition’s insistence on telling the whole story. 

STILL BLACK, STILL DANCING

Just beyond this display, a small projection room offers another kind of history: short films and testimonials from dancers, neighbours, and students speaking about what dance has meant in their lives. 

As archival footage and interviews flicker across the screen, the exhibition feels less like recorded history and more like something alive—an immortal rhythm carried forward through memory.

I sink into the cushions, the tension I carried from earlier leaving my body, as I watch Ethel Bruneau merrily “hoofing” along to the beat. 

Indeed, it’s about time we had a show like this. 

Sculptor Sarah Maloney’s idea of a pleasure ground is a little more literal. It’s the title of her most recent solo exhibition, on display at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, New Brunswick, until October 12, 2025. Pleasure Ground investigates both the body and sexuality (pleasure) as well as plants and other elements of the natural world (ground).

This exhibition has been seven years in the making. Maloney first started looking for interested collaborators back in 2018 and connected with Art Windsor-Essex, a gallery in Windsor, Ontario, and Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery in Halifax. The two organizations took on a curatorial role, and with support from Canadian Heritage’s Museum Assistance program, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery also came on board as a venue. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the world, and everything stopped. 

Leadership at the galleries changed hands, but they were still excited about the potential of getting Maloney’s work into their spaces, so in October of 2023, Pleasure Ground finally opened. 

Pleasure Ground is not a retrospective but does include pieces from all stages of Maloney’s career. The earliest piece is from 1993, when she was pregnant with her first child, and the most recent is a group of three pieces from 2021. The works in the exhibition are all vastly different from each other in size, shape, and medium and yet surprisingly cohesive in theme.

Throughout Pleasure Ground, Maloney challenges colonialism and the sneaky ways it has crept into every corner of our lives. The titular sculpture, completed in 2019, consists of a group of roughly four- to six-inch-tall, bronze Northern pitcher plants, carnivorous plants often found in bogs in Maloney’s native Nova Scotia. The plants, divorced from their natural habitat and placed in a gallery, become less recognizable as flora, calling to mind instead something vaguely suggestive of genitalia. 

The extraction of native plants and their placement in an institution are ideas Maloney toys with in other works as well. She challenges the colonial practice of collecting exotic plants through embroidery in her series of three titled Collect-Arrange (2021). These large-scale pieces are of embroidered vases, all from the British Museum collection, filled with flowers based on historical botanical illustrations. In the frame, Maloney has sculpted native Nova Scotia flowers in plaster. This both explores the exploitation due to colonialism and challenges the notion of “women’s work.” 

In her artist statement, Maloney writes, “needlework historically was a way for wealthy women to pass the time, they too were part of a collection kept at home while men went off to explore. I am drawn to embroidery because its history, process, and materiality speak to both traditional and contemporary ideas of women’s work.”

It is very difficult to choose which works to highlight, as they are all incredibly intricate and vibrant, humming with symbolism and patriarchal dissent. I could highlight Vertebrae, Sacrum, Coccyx (1998–1999), a collection of knitted organs that were created during Maloney’s second pregnancy, or Skin (2003–2012), a life-sized, beaded skin-suit that took nine years to complete. Then there’s her Reflection series (2010), which combines found furniture with bronze sculptures of orchids, their sexuality hidden behind a mirror image, and the most visually striking piece in the exhibition, Water Level (2012–2016), which reinterprets a pond landscape through a feminist lens by casting water lilies and lily pads in bronze and raising them up to eye level so you can walk through, raising questions of who is placed in view and why. 

One of the interesting things about a touring exhibition is seeing how the different gallery spaces interplay with the work. At the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Pleasure Ground is divided into two separate spaces. One is upstairs, with incredibly high ceilings, bright lights, and white gallery walls. The other, downstairs, is darker, with dark green walls and focused lighting. The exhibition spaces lend themselves to very different themes; the pieces in the basement room, whether intentionally or not, have more of a sexual overtone, highlighting the feminist elements of her work.

This decision, however, might lead viewers to miss some of Maloney’s work. The two rooms are separated by a staircase and a hallway, but there is no signage indicating that each space is just one part of a larger exhibition, or where to find the other half. This is more of an institutional critique than a curatorial one, but I could have easily left having only seen half of the show if I hadn’t decided to keep browsing the gallery.

Even if you accidentally only see half of Pleasure Ground (which you shouldn’t, now that you know it’s in two spaces), it would still be an intellectual and visual feast for your eyes. Pleasure Ground was exhibited at Art Windsor-Essex, then Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery, and is at the Beaverbrook until October 12, 2025, when it will then head to the Confederation Centre in Charlottetown. 

Jericho Knopp is a writer and arts administrator based in Menahqesk (Saint John), New Brunswick, whose work explores narratives surrounding beauty, nostalgia, and mental illness. Her practice is primarily non-fiction based, but she also dabbles in poetry and prose. Her journalism has appeared in the CBC, CreatedHere, Visual Arts News, the Telegraph-Journal, and the Georgia Straight. Her narrative non-fiction has received support from artsnb and THIRD SHIFT festival, and her fiction has appeared in the FLOURISH Festival zine, and It’s Burning Off. She currently works as the programming director for ArtsLink NB.

In the fall of 2024, the Treaty Space Gallery, whose mandate is to highlight artwork that responds to the UN’s declaration of the Decade of Indigenous Languages, themes of cultural revitalization, and notions of treaty, relocated from NSCAD’s Port Campus to 1887 Granville Street, a former bridal shop. The new location is part NSCAD’s Fountain Campus, formerly the Victoria School of Art and Design, founded in 1887 by Anna Leonowens, Mrs. Jeremiah Kenny, and sisters Ella and Eliza Ritchey to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. With wood floors, white walls, and Roman pillars, the Treaty Space Gallery is a gathering space for Indigenous students and welcomes all treaty people who come together in community.

Amalkewinu’k (The Dancers), curated by Prosper and Pardy, which ran in Halifax from February 4 to 14, 2025, illustrates the evolution of Mi’kmaw regalia by inviting viewers into an exhibition space that features studio portraits of Mi’kmaw community members in regalia, black-and-white archival images, and three pieces of regalia–a beaded cap, a headdress, and a Mi’kmaw jacket. Amalkewinu’k opens at Acadia University in fall 2025 and runs throughout October in celebration of Mi’kmaq History Month. The exhibition will also open at StFX Art Gallery in fall 2026 as part of the fiftieth anniversary of the gallery. 

Amalkewinu’k is the vision of curators Prosper, an L’nu artist and health care professional from Eskasoni First Nation, and Pardy, a photojournalist and documentary photographer, and is a collaborative community project honouring the transformation of Mi’kmaw regalia.

Presenting distinctively Mi’kmaw regalia through portraiture is central to the exhibition. Keeping the focus solely on Mi’kmaw regalia challenges misconceptions and pan-Indigeneity, honours Mi’kmaw artistic heritage, and celebrates past and present community artists, including L’nu Ancestors Once Known, Mi’kmaw youth like Rory Meuse of Membertou First Nation, and Elders like renowned author and educator Dr. Marie Battiste of Potlotek First Nation. 

“The use of ‘L’nu Ancestor Once Known’ was quite intentional on our part and a bit of a critique of museum and art collections. I first saw this practice at the National Art Gallery, but I believe it might have its origins at the AGO,” says Prosper. “Basically, in many historical collections the Indigenous artist or persons represented consistently come up as ‘Unknown,’ but if a non-Indigenous person is connected to a piece—the photographer, collector, etc. —their name is known or stated.”

The intention behind the label goes deeper and opens a critique of colonial curatorial practices. As a form of Indigenous storytelling, these details are important as they offer insight into community connections, the artistic legacy of the regalia makers, and the important reciprocal relationships. It also allows for different ways to engage with the art maker and to understand who are the people being depicted in the photographs and who are their community connections. It also invites viewers to build a relationship with the L’nu Ancestor Once Known and opens up the possibility that their names may be recovered.

A wall of contemporary, full-colour portraits by Pardy features Mi’kmaw community members from the young to Elders and Matriarchs. Jacoby Battiste-Jadis of Eskasoni First Nation is wearing regalia made by his mother, Kate Jadis, and a feather cap made by Jennifer Denny with feathers gifted by his grandparents Marie Battiste and Sakej Henderson. Wyonna Bernard of Abegweit First Nation is wearing cuffs made by Mary-Jo Isaac, cap, skirt, cape, and leggings made by Ingrid Peters (gifted by Lisa Levi), and a pin by Mi’kmaw artist Melissa Peter-Paul, also from Abegweit First Nation. Michael R. Denny of Eskasoni First Nation is wearing a vest made by Melissa Peter-Paul, leggings made by Madonna Johnson, moccasins made by Nicole Travers, cuffs and aprons made by Mary Jo Isaac, a shirt made by Georgina Doucette, and a medallion created by Washonti:io Jacobs. Elders include Dr. Marie Battiste, who is wearing a jacket, skirt, and peaked cap made and beaded by Ingrid Brooks with alterations by Nina Kent; Karen Bernard, of We’koqmaq First Nation, a well-respected women’s peaked cap workshop facilitator, who is wearing a peaked cap she made herself; and Dr. Lorraine Whitman, of Glooscap First Nation, who is wearing a peaked cap passed down by Aunt Edith Peters, which was passed down to her by her grandmother (a Millbrook band member) and a beaded cape made by the wife of Noel Knockwood and is carrying baskets made by Frank Meuse.

In the didactic material for Amalkewinu’k’s, Dr. Roger Lewis, curator of Mi’kmaw Cultural Heritage at the Nova Scotia Museum, writes: “When looking at Mi’kmaw regalia, like other cultural belongings, keep in mind the ingenuity of the artists. In a changing and evolving world, they mastered the use of other materials in their art to a point where it remains distinctively Mi’kmaw. So, it therefore is more than a craft as it was often portrayed—especially with the Indian Affairs movement to market it as such. It evolves today, and that is seen in the work of contemporary artists. Things were and are made with thought and purpose.”

Lewis and Michelle Sylliboy, a multidisciplinary L’nu artist, are advisors to Prosper and Pardy, and they continue to work together on Amalkewinu’k, which is layered with stories and continues to evolve. As the storytelling aspect of the exhibition continues, the exhibition will likely be mounted in other gallery spaces in the future.

“The storytelling that came with how they presented their personal regalia was evident,” says Prosper. “Storytelling also came out in community member reactions to the historical images. The stories involved the regalia itself or things they were reminded of when talking about their regalia, and really everything in between.” 

Across from the contemporary colour portraits of Mi’kmaw community members, Amalkewinu’k also features a wall of black-and-white archival images from the Nova Scotia Museum. One of the photographs, “Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee (1897),” features a group of prominent Mi’kmaw community members who attended the celebrations for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. Viewing the 1897 photograph in the former Victoria School of Art and Design feels like a full-circle experience, both marking, as they do, the same historic event.

One of the most striking images is a black-and-white portrait of Molly Musie from the mid-nineteenth century, taken in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, which is considered the earliest known portrait of a Mi’kmaw person depicted in a photographic process. While her birth and death dates are unknown, the didactic explains: “Molly Muise (the name was originally the French ‘Mius’ and is now spelled Meuse and Muse as well) is wearing a peaked cap with double-curve beadwork, a dark shirt, a short jacket with darker cuffs, over which she apparently has draped a second short jacket, its sleeves pulled inside, as a capelet. Her traditional dress with the large fold at the top is held up by suspenders with ornamental tabs. In her hands, she seems to be clutching a white handkerchief.”

From the first known black-and-white, archival image of a Mi’kmaw person to Pardy’s contemporary portraits of Mi’kmaw community members, Amalkewinu’k is a stunning exhibition connecting past, present and future generations of Mi’kmaw through regalia and culture.

Danielle Hogan’s book Light and Material: Weaving and the Work of Nel Oudemans begins with a quick primer on weaving technique and terminology. The short description demystifies the craft and allows the reader to better understand the true creative genius in the work of the book’s subject: Nel Oudemans. Light and Material is a biography of the acclaimed New Brunswick weaver, but more than that, the book tells the story of weaving in the province: a tale of resilience, persistence, and mastery that mirrors Oudemans’s own.

Oudemans was born in the Netherlands in 1918 and trained in tapestry weaving and embroidery in Sweden and Norway. After putting her weaving career on hold due to the Nazi occupation of her homeland, she and her husband, Jack, moved to Fredericton, where they had accepted a contract to work at a plant nursery.

Once in New Brunswick, Oudemans worked at the nursery, raised a family, and restarted her weaving career, connecting with the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design. It didn’t take long before she’d become indispensable to the craft community in the province. The technical mastery of her weaving combined with her steadfast work ethic and boundless creativity combined to form an artistic practice that brought Oudemans great acclaim over her decades of work and a lasting legacy in the form of the Nel Oudemans Award, established by the Sheila Hugh Mackay Foundation in 2002 after she died. 

In fact, receiving that award is what first prompted Hogan to learn more about Oudemans and her work. In 2003, while in Victoria working on her MFA, Hogan received the second Nel Oudemans Award. 

“Because I had gone to NBCCD, I knew who Nel was. I did not take weaving at the college, but she was such a presence. She had a very big personality. So I knew of her. I never met her,” she says. “I made a point of learning a little more about her when I was honoured with the [award].”

Fast-forward a decade and a half, and Hogan was fresh out of school yet again and ready for another project. She’d just completed her PhD in interdisciplinary studies from UNB, and her dissertation focused on how the art world systematically undervalues textiles as art because the primary creators, historically, have been women. 

Germaine Pataki-Thériault, Managing Director of Gallery 78 in Fredericton, knew of Hogan’s dissertation and connected her with Oudemans’s long-time neighbour, acclaimed writer Nancy Bauer, who had been working with Nel’s husband, Jack, to get a book written about his wife and her work.

“It was impossible to not get excited about writing this book about Nel, because [Jack] was so excited about her and what she had done and contributed,” says Hogan. “I was really inspired by his passion for getting Nel’s story out.”

Armed with access to Jack’s incredible wealth of stories and his passion for his wife’s work, Hogan got to work in bits and pieces, fitting the research and writing of the book into her already full life wherever she could. She knew she didn’t want to write a straight biography but rather to contextualize Oudemans’s story in the cultural place and time in which it occurred. She explores the deep history of New Brunswick’s textile industry, from the first cotton mill in the province, built in Geary in the early 1850s, and the founding of Loomcrofters handweaving studio by Pat Jenkins in the 1940s up to the talented weavers and fibre artists making their mark on the province today.

The result is Light and Material, a beautiful book in both the visuals and the language. Oudemans’s work is the focus of the images, but the scope of the text is immense and sometimes overwhelming, the subject shifting abruptly in an attempt to cover a vast array of subject matter within its 145 pages. It’s easy to get lost in the endless number of people and dates that are chronicled in the book. 

But that might be by design—making sure the story was as full and accurate as possible was incredibly important to Hogan. As our interview comes to a close, I ask Hogan if there’s anything else she’d like to add that I didn’t ask about. She uses the opportunity to emphasize the heaviness of the burden when writing about history.  

“I think the weight is worth bearing, because I think it’s so important that we learn about the people who’ve walked these places ahead of us and all the successes and the challenges and the failures that they faced,” she says. “It’s such a huge responsibility that I didn’t understand until I really wrote and deleted and wrote and deleted and tried to get it ‘right.’”

We are seeking an Editor for Visual Arts News. This is a freelance contract position to start September 8, 2025. The first print issue under the new Editor will be Spring/Summer 2026. The Editor should have knowledge of the communities of artists, galleries and institutions in the Atlantic region, and a curiosity to learn more. The ideal candidate will enjoy working as part of a collaborative team. They will share an excitement and enthusiasm for telling stories that shine light on the art and artists who live and work in this part of the world.

Visual Arts News is a bi-annual print magazine that explores contemporary art practices in Atlantic Canada, on the unceded and unsurrendered lands of the Beothuk, Mi’kmaq, Wolastoqiyik, Inuit, Innu, and the Southern Inuit of NunatuKavut. Published in Mi’kma’ki, Visual Arts News is a community-driven publication that seeks to enliven culture and keep record while supporting and celebrating the many overlapping communities in the Atlantic region, particularly those that have been historically ignored. We prioritize work that pushes back against white supremacy and colonialism because we are committed to supporting anti-oppression, anti-racism, Indigenous sovereignty, Black liberation, and sexual and gender diversity.

We strive to be accessible, accountable, and responsive. Visual Arts News is an ongoing conversation inspired by the artistic vision of emerging and established artists and writers who are pushing the boundaries of art and culture in Atlantic Canada.  Written in a clear, sophisticated style by talented arts writers in the region, Visual Arts News strives to reflect the diversity of our geographic and cultural communities. www.visualartsnews.ca.

We are committed to employment equity, and we will prioritize applications from those who self-identify in their application as Indigenous Peoples, Black, Persons of the Global Majority, racialized, 2SLGBTQIA+, newcomers to Canada and/or Persons with Disabilities. If you are a member of a group that has been historically excluded from opportunities, we encourage you to self-identify in your cover letter or resume. We are committed to accommodating those with disabilities at any stage of the hiring process. Information related to accommodation measures will be treated in confidence.

Visual Arts News is created and distributed as a program of Visual Arts Nova Scotia. It’s a cornerstone and a calling card for the organization.  At the same time, the magazine ia vibrant and engaging record for visual arts in the Atlantic region.

Eligibility and Qualifications

Applicants must be current residents of the Atlantic Region (NS, NB, NFLD, PEI)

The successful applicant will possess skill in writing and editing, and will be a strong verbal communicator. Knowledge and interest in the visual arts in Atlantic Canada and beyond is essential. Journalism and/or communications experience is an asset as well as an undergraduate degree in the arts, or equivalent experience.

Duties

In consultation with the Editorial Committee, the Editor is responsible for developing online and print magazine content. In conjunction with the Publisher, the Editor coordinates all aspects of publication development, and pre-press preparations including story and image selection, and copy editing. The Editor works closely with the Art Director and freelance writers, and is responsible for surveying and keeping abreast of significant developments in the visual arts in the region. For each print issue, the Editor is responsible for writing the Editorial for each print edition of magazine, and may submit content for the print editions or online content (which would be compensated separately).

The Editor is encouraged to represent Visual Arts News at conferences, book fairs, and art events if and when possible.  The Editor should have strong communication and organizational skills and be able to work independently to deadlines. Knowledge of design and related printing processes are an asset.

There is office space available for the Editor at the VANS office (1113 Marginal Rd., Halifax, NS)  The position may be remote, in whole or in part depending on the location and preference of the successful candidate.

This is a freelance contract position starting September 8, 2025.

The Editor reports to the Publisher.

The fee for this contract is $8000, annually.

Any additional articles written by the Editor would be compensated at the same rate as other writers under separate contracts. The current rate for Writers is $275 per article.

We thank all candidates for their interest. Only those selected for an interview will be contacted. Interviews will be conducted starting on May 15, 2025.

To apply, please send your resume, a cover letter and one piece of writing, as a single PDF to the attention of the Hiring Committee by email to publisher@visualarts.ns.ca

Application deadline: May 1, 2025     

Position to start: Sept. 8, 2025

By Fabiyino Germain-Bajowa

I’ve attended countless art exhibition openings in Halifax, drawn by their potential to foster community. Yet, these spaces, often claiming to celebrate cultural diversity, feel overwhelmingly white. As a newcomer committed to uplifting Black artistic production, I long to connect with people whose experiences help situate my presence on this land. Instead, I often feel isolated in my desire to see more diverse audiences—until the opening of Still Tho: Aesthetic Survival in Hip Hop’s Visual Art at Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery on September 21, 2024, in Halifax. At the opening, the gallery’s warmth struck me immediately: the sound of laughter and the beat of DJ DTS’s set created a palpable sense of belonging. For the first time since moving to Halifax from Toronto over a year and a half ago, I found myself surrounded by my community, which transformed the event into a celebration of presence and belonging in a space so rarely welcoming of Black people. 

Postcolonial theorist Jenny Sharpe’s concept of the “immaterial archive”—memories and practices that defy traditional modes of preservation in the face of archival erasure—came to mind as I walked into the MSVU Art Gallery. The opening of Still Tho powerfully disrupted systemic barriers in gallery spaces, echoing the exhibition’s embrace of hip hop’s transitory nature. The room seemed alive—the sounds of DJ DTS’s scratching mixed with snippets of conversations, blending into the exhibit as a dynamic, living element. Seeing the works for the first time in such a way, I was struck by the sense that, like the opening, the exhibition presented the ephemerality that has come to characterize hip hop’s aesthetic and the Afro-diasporic experience not as something to struggle against, but as a tool of endurance for diasporic cultural and aesthetic knowledge. 

Curated by Mark V. Campbell—DJ, scholar, curator, and founder of Northside Hip Hop Archive—Still Tho brings together fourteen artists from across Canada to explore hip hop’s ephemeral qualities as a response to histories of displacement and erasure within the Black community. Many artworks in the exhibition address this erasure, highlighting the need for self-determined archives of diasporic cultural production, ancestral knowledge, and daily life. This need for self-determined archives takes shape in the works of EGR and Corey Bulpitt, where the spray can is reimagined as a vessel for preserving diasporic narratives. EGR’s Art on Vintage Spray Cans transforms vintage spray cans into archives of past work, while Bulpitt’s Spray Can Carving blends ancestral Haida carving practices with iconic street art. Seeing both works reimagine the spray can as new cultural artifacts, I couldn’t help but feel giddy as if discovering a beloved childhood toy transformed into something wondrous and new. These works balance the tension between impermanence and preservation, repositioning ephemera as archival objects to form new immaterial archives of cultural production.

Experiencing this exhibition brought me an overwhelming sense of joy and pride, seeing not only Black artistry be celebrated, but also the spirit and community that sustains it. The opening of Still Tho felt so impactful as a disruption of systemic norms within the gallery partly due to the atmosphere of resistance and resilience reflected by the works in the show. Since hip hop was born from a period of socio-economic strife and systemic erasure, the genre’s ethos is rooted in a methodology of survival through creativity. These core values continue to appear in hip hop’s criticality of ongoing dispossession and violence enacted against Black bodies. 

Building on the exhibition’s central themes, many of the works in Still Tho challenge the systemic erasure and impermanence that have long haunted Black cultural production by immortalizing styles that historically resisted preservation and stillness. One example of this practice is a series of five miniature trains that have been “tagged” and encased in clear frames by Eklipz, who pays homage to early graffiti traditions, playfully linking personal expression to histories of urban art. Eklipz’s trains evoke a sense of nostalgia and resistance simultaneously; their polished glass casings seem almost at odds with the gritty, unapologetic vibrancy of the tags etched onto their surfaces. Similarly, Miss Me’s Free Cap, crafted from remnants of wheat-pasted posters, and STARE’s S to the T, a graffiti piece on cement-covered canvas, preserve works often erased by nature or lost to municipal cleanup efforts, effectively disrupting the boundaries between the gallery and the street. In doing so, these works highlight graffiti’s physical fragility while celebrating its resilience as a cultural practice. They present an opportunity to ask what constitutes art and who decides its value, sparking the question: Does enshrining the ephemeral neutralize its rebellious spirit, or does it amplify its resilience?

This dialogue between resilience and resistance continues in works by Mark Stoddart and Eklipz, which draw from hip hop’s tradition of remixing and sampling to recontextualize cultural imagery, exposing enduring systems of oppression. Through this process, they transform art into a vessel for memory and critique, challenging viewers to confront global systems of inequity. Stoddart’s Fight the Power parallels Radio Raheem’s fictional murder in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989) and the real-life murder of Eric Garner over thirty years later, exposing the persistent realities of police brutality. Meanwhile, Eklipz’s Coltan Kills juxtaposes smart phone advertisements with the violent truth of resource extraction, critiquing capitalism’s exploitation of the Global South. By remixing cultural symbols and historical narratives, these works effectively archive the intangible yet vital sentiments of resistance and survival that originated hip hop as a genre, constructing new meanings while preserving their origins. 

At its core, Still Tho: Aesthetic Survival in Hip Hop’s Visual Art examines the tension between transience and legacy, reminding us that the act of preservation is itself a radical gesture. By exploring hip hop’s visual culture and survival aesthetics, the exhibition—and its vibrant opening event—reveal ephemerality not as a limitation, but as an act of resistance. This impermanence becomes a way of creating cultural memory in defiance of historical erasure, inviting us to ask: How can hip hop and exhibitions like this one inspire new ways of valuing, protecting, and learning from cultural expressions that resist archiving? What might such conversations reveal about the writing of history and our imagined futures? In posing these questions, Still Tho celebrates the resilience of cultural memory amid forces of erasure, showing us that ephemeral art forms within hip hop, like the African diaspora itself, persist and endure—still tho.

Fabiyino Germain-Bajowa (she/her) is a Nigerian-Canadian writer, curator, and interdisciplinary artist based in Kjipuktuk (Halifax). Her work engages Afro-diasporic archives of thought and memory inherited through oral history, food traditions, and acts of care. Centring the lived experiences of Black artists, her community-based practice seeks to build networks of knowledge as tools for cultural literacy. She earned her BFA in Criticism and Curatorial Practice from OCAD University and has curated programs such as Tell the Body (Vtape, Toronto), The Suppa Club (with Temple Marucci-Campbell, Toronto), and the upcoming exhibition Down Home at Dalhousie Art Gallery (2025). Currently, she is the TD Fellow Assistant Curator at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.

By Geoffrey Webster

Sackville-based artist Graeme Patterson’s third thematic exhibition Strange Birds at the Dalhousie Art Gallery, September 6 to November 10, 2024, showcased his limitless talent and ability to provide a wide range of viewers with a cutting-edge yet accessible art-viewing experience. 

From sculpture to virtual reality, Strange Birds ticked off all the boxes of an interactive and deeply engaging exhibition. As the primary art educator for Strange Birds, I found the thematic generosity of the work made my job easy. The artist’s major theme for Strange Birds explores eco-anxiety, a potent fear surrounding the planet’s unforeseeable future due to climate change. Instead of promoting panic, Patterson transforms the alarming topic into an approachable investigation of two protagonists, the heron and the Space Disco starlings. 

These two central characters are portrayed as behaviourally oppositional: the heron stoically reflected the ever-changing Tantramar Marshes, while the starlings were depicted as the frantic executors of these changes. The different interactions between the characters reveal representations of our shared experience with the world around us. As viewers, we study the landscape and try to understand the changes we have made within it, like the heron. But we’re also the dancing Space Disco starlings, coping with our day-to-day, reaping what we’ve sown.

Both complex and technical, Patterson’s Strange Birds depicts the elegance of the Tantramar Marshes while also showcasing its changing nature. Viewers can first see both central figures in conceptual conversation through Patterson’s central film, Strange Birds. The film features a stop-motion animated heron, as well as costumed live-action performances of the starlings. The film is projected on a wall in the exhibition space and acts as a portal to a new yet familiar world. Additionally, the sonic composition featured in the film acts as an ambient accompaniment throughout the exhibition space.   

Patterson presents another place, a smaller yet equally intricate one: a 1:10-scale model of his Sackville home. This artwork feels in no way a constructed miniature of the artist’s home but a shrunken-down version. It looks incredibly realistic and functional. During my time touring Strange Birds, Patterson’s miniature model generated a lot of dialogue with gallery goers, who primarily commented on how immersive it was despite its size. The carefully crafted details in every room are paired with components like flickering lights and rotating doors, which feel as though you are in the starling’s house of imagination.

The Tree is a sculpture partly made from an actual fallen tree, but it also has an important role as a character representing monoculture tree planting in the Strange Birds film. Diane Langevin, Dalhousie Art Gallery’s Indigenous consultant, explained to me the negative impact this form of tree planting has had on numerous Indigenous communities. Langevin shared how these actions have been part of how the government has made communities non-self-sufficient. 

Langevin’s attention was also struck by another sculpture, The House Core. This crisp yet stark model was a cut-out cylindrical section of Patterson’s miniature home but treated as a whole and not a part. It resembles a 3-D blueprint of what a home could look like in the future. While my tour groups and I focused on the distant possibilities of this new technology, Langevin shared that 3-D digital printing technology is currently being used in northern Indigenous communities to build home parts. As a result, Patterson’s sculptures The Tree and The House Core serve as personal and cross-cultural instruments for vibrant dialogue.

The highlight of Strange Birds was the virtual reality room. Set up in the media gallery, VR “Island” transported visitors into the world of the starlings and the heron, which enabled a more interpersonal relationship with the protagonists. I feared that the virtual reality component would detract from the narrative’s ethos, as this sort of technology has proven distractingly theatrical and forced in my past experiences. But with the already introduced and pre-existing world of Strange Birds, Patterson’s use of VR channels the spirit of the exhibition and facilitates an immersive yet appropriate viewing experience. The artist also considered accessibility; if guests were not comfortable with virtual reality or were eagerly waiting to try it out, a clever inclusion of a montage containing key aspects of VR “Island” was projected in the adjacent room. VR “Island” also brought viewers back to the gallery’s entrance, where they could revisit the pivotal Strange Birds short film. 

Patterson’s work was thoughtfully considered, but so was the choice of the Dalhousie Art Gallery as a host venue. The space’s circular nature supplemented the cyclical relationship between both principal characters and fostered a strong narrative flow. It was equally remarkable to see how all of the artworks (distinctly the media-based ones) lived within the brutalist exhibition space. Patterson is at his creative peak, and wherever he lands next, it is definite that his artistic brilliance will carry on.

Geoffrey Webster is an artist and writer based in Kjipuktuk (Halifax). Currently in the last year of his BFA in Expanded Media at NSCAD University, his ongoing artistic endeavours surround researching digital media, focusing on its interpretation, practices of preservation, and its educational properties and opportunities. Geoffrey has been part of the Dalhousie Art Gallery for almost two years, most recently working as an art educator with the goal of broadening art’s reception through critical yet accessible discussion. He has also been working as a research

I was initially attracted to visiting the exhibition based on prior interest in the work of Theaster Gates. I had first heard about his work with the Stony Island Arts Bank. The bank was built in 1923 on the South Side of Chicago and operated as such until the 1980s. After sitting vacant for decades, it was reopened in 2015 as a hybrid gallery, media archive, library, and community centre. The building houses multiple archival collections such as personal vinyls in the collection of Frankie Knuckles, known as the godfather of house music, and the Edward J. Williams Collection of “negrobilia,” approximately four thousand objects that make use of stereotypical images of Black people, now out of public circulation but available as a reminder of history and the need for ongoing analysis. I approached the exhibition with notions of archival agency hovering in the back of my mind. 

The first work I encountered was Souvenir by Chantal Gibson, part of Down Home: Portraits of Resilience curated by Fabiyino Germain-Bajowa. This work explores the “collective historical experience of Blackness” through souvenir spoons and the act of reproduction of an image. Souvenir spoons tend to bear imagery of constructed statehood and reify colonial narratives. Gibson has blacked out the spoons, evoking a myriad of different readings for the work. White’s outlines of the painted spoons, presented in an artist’s book, hover like ghosts, referring back to the colonial imagery revealed in the texture of the blacked-out spoons. The installation is neighboured by a video in which Gibson spotlights the notion of the “Black wench.” The term originated in The Stepsure Letters (1821–1823) by Thomas McCulloch, a book that is widely considered to be a cornerstone of Canadian satire. Gibson calls into question the “distortions that become entrenched in culture over time.” 

Walking through the gallery, I pass by the library tucked away in the corner of the space. I am greeted by images of splintwood basketry from Nova Scotia and Gee’s Bend quilts from Alabama, craft techniques, traditions, and objects as archives of the communities that made them. From the library I walk to another space containing tools of memory. 

Oluseye: By Faith and Grit, curated by Pamela Edmonds, weaves “a tapestry of Blackness in Canada” with objects that the artist refers to as “diasporic debris.” Through objects tied to labour, Oluseye, a Nigerian-Canadian artist, highlights stories of Black rurality. By bringing forth the basketry of Edith Clayton from the twentieth century and photographs of contemporary Black farmers from the twenty-first, Oluseye bridges narratives of “endurance and legacy.” As calluses on a labourer’s hands tell a story, so do the tools that made them. 

Meandering through the gallery space, I have arrived back to Down Home: Portraits of Resilience and its works that harness “alternative archival forms.” Nylon stockings and school photos are used in Rebecca Fisk’s work Confessions of an Invisible Sister to bring forth complexities of race, identity, and colourism in the Black community. By using an array of shades of nylon stockings, ranging from eggshell to deep ebony, Fisk calls into question the arbitrariness of damaging prejudices experienced by Afro-diasporic people. Fisk uses her childhood school photos, material from her personal archive, to invite the audience to reflect on the pressures to conform and the emotional toll of discrimination. 

The painting The Faith Catchers by Justin Augustine shows two young men in front of New Horizons Baptist Church in the North End of Halifax. Augustine’s paintings often depict figures in landscapes reminiscent of Dominica, where the artist was born, and Nova Scotia, where he emigrated in his youth. His work explores how surroundings influence identities and the depiction of local landmarks works to sustain “diasporic knowledge, sentiment, and cultural legacy.”

I then enter a dark screening room. I am lulled by the familiar tune of “Amazing Grace,” but it’s different from any other time I’ve heard it. Theaster Gates: Billy Sings Amazing Grace is a hypnotic meditation on “one of the most enduring hymns in the English-speaking world.” Vibrating riffs draw me in, stretched out and chopped apart. Baring teeth, sounding out every single micro vocal, and trying out words in every possible way. Repeating words, rhythms, sounds as if searching for hidden meanings whilst also uncovering new translations of the lyrics, almost threadbare from years of wear. Steely drum clangs, liquid saxophone trills, and clacking sticks fill the room with hypnotic energy like an ecstatic dance. Every last drop is squeezed from the song. 

In the video work, Theaster Gates and his musical ensemble The Black Monks rehearse the song with soul singer Billy Furston. The song, as an archival document of Black redemption and emancipation, is reappropriated as a meditation through drawn-out riffs and repeated rhythms, feeling out every single note and story that each word contains. Forston’s voice “reimagines grace as a continual, evolving process—realized through collective effort, community, and the pursuit of redemption.” 

The three-part exhibition Mapping Black Resilience: Three Perspectives at Dalhousie Art Gallery offers alternate practices to archiving and documenting history. Most histories are embedded into daily lives, and the exhibition reveals stories that have always been there but haven’t always been recognized in colonial structures. The exhibition becomes an archive of its own, an archive of resilience.  

“It’s not a typical snake. It’s magic. It can change and shift,” says Syliboy, who lives in Millbrook First Nation. “The snake is the imagination. It’s only temporary, a magic that appears and disappears. Eventually, it will be painted over. But it made an appearance,” he says, thereby reiterating the image’s significance. 

The red-horned snake holds powerful medicines. The mural is based on Jipijka’m, a Mi’kmaw legend about a snake. 

“For me it was important to have a mural in the gallery space. I think it’s a significant part of Alan’s art-making practice,” says curator Edmonds. “The great horned serpent is a mythological animal that takes on the shape of the space. It winds around the room into the alcove. It speaks to the stories and legends in the work.” 

In a way, the snake moves with the viewer throughout the retrospective. 

“It’s a protector, a medicinal protector that greets you and pulls you into the space,” says Edmonds. “It’s like the petroglyphs etched in stone that are disappearing due to the elements. The wall paint will still exist and will remain in the memory of the walls. 

“The presence of the great horned snake will always be underneath and cannot be removed.”

The Journey So Far is a retrospective. Early on in his career, Syliboy was inspired by artists like Marc Chagall, J.M.W. Turner, and Carl Beam. The Journey So Far includes a landscape painting, “Whycocomagh Sunset” (1972), and collage works (Joe Julien and Members of the Grand Council, Grandfather, Grandmother 1 & 2, Baby Alan, and Young Alan, ca. 2012–2014) that feature black-and-white images of Syliboy as a baby and images of his grandmother Rachael Marshall, who introduced him to Shirley Bear.

Before attending Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University, Syliboy studied with Wolastoqiyik multimedia artist Shirley (Minqwôn-Minqwôn) Bear (1936–2022), who was a renowned poet, activist, and curator from Tobique First Nation. 

“Shirley changed everything. She changed the world for me. As a student, I was a failure. I started to make cabinets at my uncle Fred’s cabinet shop,” says Syliboy. “I was making cabinets there, and Shirley came in to interview me for a project in the USA in the 1970s, an art project with the idea to do workshops in Native communities. It was really leading-edge.”

Back then, we Indigenous people weren’t allowed or invited to teach in our own communities. “Outsiders did all the teaching,” says Syliboy. “For us to teach our own people—it never happened before.”

Syliboy credits Bear for launching his art career and broadening his worldview. “My world was small until then. She took me out into the bigger world where there was art and possibilities,” he says. “At the time there weren’t many, if any, Native artists per se.”

Bear found Red Earth, a book of petroglyphs published by the Museum of Nova Scotia in 1971, which unearthed Syliboy’s ongoing fascination with the marks on the ground and symbols etched into rocks. “The petroglyphs were how we investigated our own identities. Mi’kmaw people didn’t know about petroglyphs,” he says. “It started things going for us, and the knowledge became deeper and wider. Opened up all kinds of alleys.”

Over the past five decades, Syliboy has exhibited nationally and internationally in solo and group shows. He is one of the most prolific and treasured artists in Mi’kma’ki. Syliboy left art school in the late 1960s; twenty-five years later he was invited to sit on NSCADU’s board of governors. In 2002, he received the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal, and in 2023 he was longlisted for the Sobey Art Award. 

Syliboy credits social media as an important tool. Not only in terms of sharing his artwork, but also for connecting with folks all over the world. His social media posts roll out at first light every day and feature the Daily Drum, a photograph of one of his hundreds of hand-painted drums. Sometimes he’s holding the drum, for other images it’s placed on the earth. 

His posts also include a personalized message about the Mi’kmaw teachings depicted on the drum. For example, on June 10, 2024, Syliboy posted on social media: “The whale’s wisdom extends beyond the boundaries of time and space, reminding us that we are all connected in the vast web of existence. Its presence invites us to embrace a sense of unity with all living beings.”

The Journey So Far was dreamlike and illustrated Syliboy’s vast, vivid, and vibrant interwoven creative practices. There was a deep sense of spirituality, magic, and various forms of play found throughout. Not only is Syliboy an artist who has been dedicated to visual art, drum-making, music, jam sessions, and animations, but he has also published several children’s books. His significant contribution to children’s literature includes When the Owl Calls Your Name (Nimbus Publishing, 2023), Wolverine and Little Thunder: An Eel Fishing Story (Nimbus, 2022), Mi‘kmaw Daily Drum: Mi‘kmaw Culture for Every Day of the Week (Nimbus, 2020), Mi‘kmaw Wasisik / Mi‘kmaw Animals (Nimbus, 2018), and Kaqtukowateketew / The Thundermaker (Nimbus, 2018), which is translated by Lindsay R. Marshall. The retrospective included storyboards from these children’s books.

“Alan’s work teaches us about the importance of memory and of cultural heritage. He is preserving the culture by bringing the lost stories and language to his community,” says Edmonds. “Also by sharing it with a broader community. When he reads the stories to the kids, they know the Mi’kmaw words. These are children from all cultural backgrounds. It’s quite moving to see [on] how many levels he has been able to really have an impact.” 

Edmonds first met Syliboy when she was an emerging curator in Kjipuktuk/Halifax in the late 1990s. As part of her own curatorial practice, she was interested in artists who were engaged in grassroots activism. 

“I don’t think Alan would consider his work activism, but he is focused on communities and bringing communities together, first and foremost the Mi’kmaw community and Mi’kmaw culture.”

Edmonds contextualizes Syliboy’s work as an important link between contemporary art and Mi’kmaw culture and art, but she wasn’t seeing his work engaged with on national or international levels. This is why she nominated him for a Sobey Art Award last year and is working with Syliboy on a catalogue for major publication as part of The Journey So Far retrospective.

“Alan’s work should be included in major exhibitions of Indigenous art on the national and international scale,” she says. “His work is very important in Mi’kma’ki but also to the broader conversation around Indigenous art in Canada, Turtle Island, and beyond.”

The Journey So Far was a survey exhibition that offered an insight into Syliboy’s long-standing career and ongoing shifts in creative praxis. “I was very struck by Alan as an artist, in particular his drawings, and how they are related to culture and history,” says Edmonds. “I think he’s an amazing artist in terms of his drawings—the graphic quality and the strong spiritual presence.”

Early sketches and pieces included in the retrospective are from private collector Marcia Hennessy, who collected over one hundred of Syliboy’s works during her lifetime. And in a way, this relationship offers an insight into Syliboy’s remarkable journey. Via letters, Christmas cards, and emails, viewers catch a glimpse of the connection between the artist and the collector, as well as Hennessy’s deep admiration of Syliboy’s work. As part of his retrospective, Syliboy wanted to celebrate Hennessy and the significant impact she had on supporting him as an artist and as a single father. 

When Hennessy first discovered Syliboy’s work at Bay of Spirits Gallery in Toronto, she bought a few pieces of his art. And then a few more. At the time, the gallery asked Syliboy if he could make a special picture or write a note for Hennessy because she was such a unique client. From there, Hennessy found Syliboy’s work online. “She would buy directly from me from then on. That’s how our relationship started,” says Syliboy.

The two only ever met in person once when Syliboy had an exhibition (Homeboys, with Alex Janvier) at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in 2001. She came for the exhibition and stayed to visit with him for a few days.  

“I never did see her again, but she would call me from time to time,” says Syliboy. Hennessy continued to collect Syliboy’s work online, and the two stayed in touch. She had always planned to come back to Nova Scotia, but her health deteriorated. Hennessy crossed over to the spirit world in 2020.

“Marcia only collected one artist, and that was me. And she only listened to [Canadian pianist] Glenn Gould,” he says. “So, there was only me and Glenn Gould in her house.” The collector even sent Syliboy an entire collection of Gould’s recordings on CD. “Glenn Gould is brilliant. She wanted Glenn Gould and I together, so I painted a series while listening to Glenn. [His music] affected my work.” 

Syliboy acknowledges how incredibly grateful he was for Hennessy’s support and their long friendship. He always gave her first dibs on his artwork.

“I was a single parent on welfare. To have support like that is absolutely amazing. She really helped me bring these kids up,” says Syliboy. “We were very close that way. She was always in my corner. She helped me provide for my kids, which was very important. Marcia would send them cards at Christmas and some money. An incredible person.”

From a curatorial perspective, Edmonds wants to highlight the importance of relationships and to demystify the capitalistic conventions often seen in the art world. Artists need financial support beyond grants and exhibition fees to maintain their practices. 

“It was an interesting way to build a story around Alan’s work, which has changed so much over the past thirty years,” she says. “Marcia wasn’t necessarily a woman of wealthy means, but she was someone who loved his art and bought it. 

“She had Alan’s work all over her home, even with modest means. I wanted to show the importance of supporting artists. It humanizes the artist and artist supporters.” 

My favourite of Syliboy’s earlier works in the retrospective, Home (1999, pencil and acrylic on paper), comes from Hennessy’s private collection. I was initially drawn by the great horned serpent into the abstract swirls of forest greens and soft and deep blue shades and was delighted by the bright red sun with brilliant yellow. But upon closer examination, it was the greens, blues and dreamy light pinks of the geometric forms that captivated me. As I gazed longer at the recurring symbols, curves, and pastels of Syliboy’s cosmology, admiring the intricate pencil drawings, I looked back at the mural. And for a moment, I felt humbled by the great horned serpent who guided me there and then to the ancestors. But most of all I felt connected and grateful to Syliboy for continually sharing his journey thus far.