The听Mellon ISCEI听Artist听in听Residence听program听is an important means听of bringing听practicing artists to campus to听continue their work,听share their expertise, interact with students and faculty members, and enhance knowledge of and exposure to Indigenous art among the campus community and the public at large.听The annual Artist听in听Residence will听be co-organized with the Department of听Art History & Communication Studies听and will听be听involved听in a variety of on-campus activities such as workshops and public exhibitions, and will be available as a resource to students,听faculty, and staff.听听
Winter 2025 Artist-in-Residence
MC Snow is a transdisciplinary artist living in Kahnawake. After obtaining his BFA from the University of Ottawa in 1987, Snow returned to the Kanien鈥漦eha:ka community situated on the St Lawrence river,across from the city of Montreal (Tiotiake). He became known as an artist through his early work with the Turtle Island Theatre Company ,the after school art program at the Kahnawake Youth Center, and the Mohawk curriculum Center.
Snow鈥檚 focus as an artist is grounded in traditional indigenous arts and techniques.His concerns lean into the concept of transmission of cultural traditions, ways ,and belief systems. Favored mediums include the traditional crafting techniques of regalia, the contrast of pre-colonial and modern art materials, the fusion of blended techniques and resiliency of hybrid innovations.
Snow has been a participant in the Biennale Arts Contemporains Autochtone for the past 6 years, has showed at many galleries and group shows across the province and United States,and the Biennale Metiers d鈥橝rts de Paris , R茅v茅lations ,with the honoured representatives of the Province of Quebec in Paris,2023.
In 2023,24,Snow was the artist in residence at the McCord Stewart Museum in Montreal with his exhibit Presence of the Past. This expo paralleled 2 new sculptures with 40 objects selected from the rarely seen collections of indigenous artifacts and objects being housed at the museum. The value of the input of the original communities from which these objects were collected is highlighted and brought to front of focus. Pr茅sence du Pass茅 also sheds some light into the ongoing digs in Tiotiake that continue to unearth the voices of our ancestors.
From 2017 to 2024,MC worked with the City of Montreal to co-create Our Ways:Peel Trail. In a close partnership with the creative teams of Tiotiake and artist Kyra Revenko,the 11 stations of bronze spherical chairs dialogue at various intersections along Peel street. These are markers to commemorate the memory of our original settlements. It also seats us on the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Adress .The seats evoke a safe space for dialogue that contrasts the distinct histories of our new neighbours, the often conflicting values, the shared loyalties to our separate identities, and the road ahead of us.
Previous Residencies听
Caroline Monnet听
Monnet's work in film, painting and sculpture deals with complex ideas around Indigenous identity and bicultural living through the examination of cultural histories. She is interested in themes of identity, representation, and modernity. Monnet has made a signature for working with industrial materials, combining the vocabulary of popular and traditional visual culture with the tropes of modernist abstraction to create unique hybrid forms.
Her work has been programmed internationally at the Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), TIFF (CAN), Sundance (US), Aesthetica (UK), Palm Springs (USA), Cannes Film Festival, Museum of Contemporary Art (Montr茅al), Arsenal Contemporary NY, Axen茅o7 (Gatineau), Walter Phillips Gallery (Banff), Division Gallery (Montr茅al) and the National Art Gallery (Ottawa).
In 2016, she was selected for the prestigious Cin茅fondation residency in Paris. Caroline Monnet's art has also been included in numerous collections including Quebec Museum of Fine Arts, National Art Gallery, RBC Royal Bank, and Museum of Contemporary Art Montr茅al. Current exhibitions include the Whitney Biennial and the Toronto Biennale of Art 2019. She is based in Montr茅al and represented by Division Gallery.
You can view more of Caroline's work on her .
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Proximal I, II, III, IV, V, 2018:
The sculptural complement to Transatlantic is Proximal I-V, a set of five concrete spheres set atop glossy black plinths. In their scattered arrangement, the plinths reflect the landmasses that morph in and out of view toward the beginning and end of the film, and the spheres atop them refer to the standing stones of the Neolithic people of north-western France and the earthen mounds of the Great Lakes.
The spheres are something between way stone and grave marker. Through the marriage of industrial processes and the water of an unspecified location, they become both guideposts and monuments to bodies unmoored in the interstices of the global.
360 Degrees
This short film introduces us to S茅bastien Aubin, a French-speaking member of Manitoba's Opaskwayak Cree Nation. He works as a graphic artist for a living, but he's embarked on a personal spiritual and identity quest on the side. Attempting to transcend the material world, he's apprenticing in traditional Indigenous medicine with healer Mark Thompson. The relationship between the two figures marks the contrast between generations; between modernity and tradition. It makes the 360-degree turn from the values of the past to those of today strikingly apparent.
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The Flow Between Hard Places (2019)
The undulating edges of this monumental sculpture represent the sound waves created in uttering the word pasapkedjinawong (鈥渢he river that passes between the rocks鈥�) in Anishinaabemowin, as spoken by Anishnaabe Elder Rose Wawatie-Beaudoin.
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Dayna Danger听
Dayna Danger (they/them) is a Two-Spirit, Indigiqueer, M茅tis-Saulteaux-Polish visual artist. Danger was raised in Miiskwaagamiwiziibiing, Treaty 1 territory, or so-called Winnipeg. They are currently based in Tiohti谩:ke/M艒niy膩ng, or so-called Montreal. Through utilizing the processes of photography, sculpture, performance and video, Danger creates works and environments that question the line between empowerment and objectification by claiming the space.
Ongoing works exploring bdsm and beaded leather fetish masks negotiate the complicated dynamics of sexuality, gender, and power in a consensual and feminist manner. Their focus remains on Indigenous and M茅tis visual and erotic sovereignty. Danger has exhibited their work most recently at the National Gallery of Canada with 脌badakone | Continuous Fire | Feu continuel and was long-listed for the 2021 Sobey Art award. Danger was featured on the cover of Canadian Art鈥檚 June 2018 Kinship issue. Danger has participated in residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts and at Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art. In 2021, they began a doctorate at Concordia University that focuses on hide-tanning stories and bush skills, culture camps, passed on from their Saulteaux great-grandmother, Madeline McLeod (Campbell).
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Big'Uns
Big鈥楿ns explores the reclaiming of the bodies and sexualities of trans, non-binary, femme, and female-identified individuals.
鈥淚n today鈥檚 culture, trans, non-binary, and women-identified individuals often lack power over their own sexuality. This occurs through misrepresentation, objectification, and violence against us in various media, even hunting magazines. Sport hunting uses language that is violent and oppressive to us as well as to animals. In their essay 鈥淎nimals, Women, and Weapons: Blurred Sexual Boundaries in the Discourse of Sport Hunting鈥� from 2004, Kalof, Fitzgerald and Baralt conclude that 鈥淎nimals鈥� physical attributes are described using stereotypical feminine characteristics of appearance.鈥� An example is the use of 鈥淏ig鈥檜ns鈥� to describe an animal鈥檚 antlers. This type of language usage plays a key role in disempowering our sexuality.
Big鈥�Uns is an ongoing photographic portrait series that explores reclaiming sexuality and our bodies. By repossessing antlers in this way, we aim to demonstrate a reclaiming of power for trans, non-binary, and women-identified individuals and how we choose to be seen.鈥�
In the Studio
from on .
Tiffany Shaw
Tiffany Shaw is a M茅tis architect, artist and curator based in Alberta. She holds a BFA from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) University, a Masters in Architecture from the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and is currently working at Reimagine Architects. Shaw has exhibited widely including the Architecture Venice Biennale, Winnipeg Art Gallery, Pier 21, Agnes Etherington Art Centre and the Chicago Architecture Biennial. She has been the recipient of multiple public art commissions such as Edmonton's Indigenous Art Park and Winnipeg鈥檚 Markham Bus Station. Among her public art projects Tiffany has produced several notable transitory art works and is a core member of Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective.
Oscillating between digital and analogue methodologies Shaw鈥檚 work gathers notions of craft, memory and atmosphere. Her practice is often guided by communal interventions as a way to engage a lifted understanding of place. While born in Calgary and raised in Edmonton, Shaw鈥檚 M茅tis lineage derives from Fort McMurray via Fort McKay and the Red River.
To learn more about Tiffany and to view a selection of her work, visit her .听
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You can read more about this initiative听by referring to Call to Action #25 in听the Provost鈥檚 Task Force on Indigenous Studies and Indigenous Education report听linked here: