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 2024 Artist-in-Residence
Originally from the Ilnu community of Mashteuiatsh, Soleil Launi猫re lives and works in Ti枚hti脿:ke - Mooniyang (Montreal). A transdisciplinary artist combining song, movement, theater, installation and performance art, she sporadically uses experimental multimedia to make spiritual in-betweens felt. Since 2008, Soleil has created several performances for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal artistic gatherings and events, both inside and outside traditional dissemination networks, and across continents. Umanishish, her first major production, premiered at Usine C in 2019. That same year, she appeared in L脿 o霉 le sang se m锚le on the stages of the National Arts Centre and Le Diamant. The following year, she co-directed Courir l'Am茅rique at Th茅芒tre Quat'Sous and produced Sheuetamu at M.A.I in Montreal. In 2021, she created Meshtitau at the Festival Trans-Am茅rique. Akuteu, her first theatrical text and most recent creation, was brought to the stage in 2022 at Th茅芒tre d'Aujourd'hui.
Since 2020, she has been Associate Artist and Professor at the National Theatre School of Canada and Director of Production AUEN, the company she founded. She is currently artistic consultant to Mirari and Robert Lepage for the Oaxaca World Expo 2025. A new mother, she launched her first music album, Taueu, and saw her text Akuteu published by Remue-m茅nage.
Soleil Launi猫re draws inspiration from her own experience, from myths and the spirit of animals. She creates passages between the visible and invisible worlds, as well as between diverse realities such as her two-fold spirituality and her dual Ilnu and Qu茅b茅cois culture. Sensitive and powerful, her presence, voice and works leave no one indifferent.
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: