October 30, 2024, 1:30 PM to 2:30 PM
LIMITED PLACES : BOOK HERE
On October 30 at 1:30 p.m., La Guilde welcomes artist Heather Shillinglaw to talk about her artistic practice and her work currently on display in the gallery.This guided tour is an opportunity to discover the artist's textile work, such as in ᒫᒥᑐᓀᔨᐦᒋᑲᐣ ᑯᑖᐄᐧᐤ | mâmitonêyihcikan kotâwîw | my mind digs in the soil like a turtle. She is inspired by the maternal landscapes of her home territory and brings focus to the importance of water and the transmission of generational knowledge
My nohkoms – (grandmothers) played key roles in trade on the old Indian trails*, as translators for the Hudson Bay Company. My art honors them and the stories shared as this helps me connect Canadian and Albertan history and familial ethnographies.
Heather Shillinglaw
Free to the public, this activity has limited places. We look forward to welcoming you!
À propos de l'artiste
Heather Shillinglaw is a visual artist from the Cold Lake First Nations, in Alberta. She is of Newyhin (Cree), Dene (Chipewyan), Saulteaux/Ojibwe and European (Scottish and French) descent. Her practice explores territory and ancestral practices of the First Peoples of Mihkinâk - Turtle Island - and revolves around the themes of environmental protection, nature’s healing power, knowledge of medicinal plants and the importance of Women in the perpetuation of these knowledge.
She is a graduate of the Alberta College of Art and Design(1996) and, her work is now part of many prestigious governmental and private collections, such as the TD Bank (Edmonton), the Toronto Canadian Native Arts Foundation and the Buenos Aires’ Canadian embassy.. Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions in Canada, Europe, and South America and she has many pieces of public artwork in her portfolio.
Her work has an ecological dimension due to her work with scientists and engagement with ancestral knowledge from here and abroad. In 2009, during a symposium in an Argentinian university, she was invited by the Canadian embassy to go to Mendoza to work with anthropologists to study and exchange with Tobian-Guarani and Mapuche healers. In 2016, she proposed an installation in the environmental exhibition in Budapest, Hungary, about the destructive environmental consequences of the Primrose Lake tar sand industries on the ancestral Cree and Déné territory.
Shillinglaw says that with age, her activism echoes more and more within her art. However, it’s during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada that her activism through art engages more deeply with the scale of torments imposed on Indigenous people and their families, from her position as a survivor of colonialist educational systems during the 20th century.
Image: Heather Shillinglaw, série ᒫᒥᑐᓀᔨᐦᒋᑲᐣ ᑯᑖᐄᐧᐤ | mâmitonêyihcikan kotâwîw | my mind digs in the soil like a turtle, 2022-24