Ebbs & Flows: Madweyàshkà | Like a Wave

Last Summer, Shelley Niro’s works took Ottawa by storm in two concurrent exhibitions: Madweyàshkà | Like a Wave, a group show spanning over thirty years of work by Indigenous artists at the Canada Council for the Arts Art Bank Âjagemô art space on Elgin, and Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch, a major retrospective at the National Gallery of Canada. Both exhibitions elicit fruitful conversations about how colonialism has been felt and resisted over time by the Indigenous artists and curators involved. Nosy Mag’s Jess Endress and Marianne Brown partnered up to interview two of the leading forces behind these projects, curator Olivia Kristoff and curator and artist Greg A. Hill.

Installation View, *Madweyàshkà | Like a Wave*. Curated by Olivia Kristoff at the Âjagemô exhibition space, Canada Council for the Arts, Ottawa. Courtesy of Canada Council Art Bank. Photo: Brandon Clarida Image Services.

In her curatorial statement, Kristoff writes:

“Madweyàshkà. The waves hit the shore, the sound as unbroken and inherent as our breathing. The experience of being Indigenous in Canada means some days are spent drowning in the tsunami of chaos. Then the waves retreat, and we rise up with strength. Over and again, there is a constant ebb and flow, like a wave. It never ceases, and we are always braced for the next impact.

Indigenous artists share a different perspective on history, including both the rise and fall of our cultural freedom. This is represented in the collection of pieces created over the span of 30 years. Everything is connected—our teachings and timelines are not linear, and we are guided by those who came before us. These artists have influenced and inspired each other, cutting new paths with the driving force of the strongest wave.”

For Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch, co-curators Melissa Bennett, Greg Hill and David Penney write:

“Spanning four decades of photography, film, painting, installation, sculpture and mixed-media practice, this major exhibition highlights the themes Niro constantly returns to: Past Is Present, Matriarchy, Actors, and Family Relations.

Niro’s persistent vision is to represent Indigenous women and girls, advocating for self-representation and sovereignty. Her highly empathetic approach moves viewers to understand the issues at hand through her visually impactful and politically powerful manner. She uses parody, feminism, and spirituality to examine identity, and in turn, brings political power to the realm of the personal.”

In the following interviews, we explore Kristoff and Hill’s perspectives on official and alternative histories and the ways in which these inform perceptions of the self. Read on to learn more about Kristoff’s curatorial process, the source behind the beautiful title Madweyàshkà | Like a Wave, Hill’s response to the exhibition as one of the contributing artists, and his perspective having co-curated Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch.

Jess Endress (Nosy Mag) & Olivia Kristoff, curator, Madweyàshkà | Like a Wave

Jess Endress: Madweyàshkà | Like a Wave is such a beautiful exhibition title. What story did you want it to tell for the exhibition?

Olivia Kristoff: The title is a quote taken from a 1998 interview of Shelley Niro in conversation with Lawrence Abbott. They were discussing her piece In Her Lifetime (1992) in the exhibition. The way that piece is set up is like a wave, which is unintentional. The subject in the photos, which is the artist’s sister, goes in this literal wave format, but it also ties in with the text of the piece. The text is describing the way in which the Indigenous experience in Canada is often like a wave, you have these kind of moments where it’s really dark and then you remember that you have to continue on with your life, and things will consistently be like this and then you have really good days, and then it comes crashing down. It’s always this wave, and everyone has those experiences. The title is taken from that quote, and then we thought about how that connects to a lot of things, and many pieces in the exhibition do sort of very clearly or more subconsciously connect to that idea of our history being dark at times, but also very celebratory and light at times. That’s just something that we deal with every day, and it might never get better in this lifetime, but we’re hoping to bring the next generation to the next top of the wave. It may never remain at the top of the wave, because colonialism is a full system, and we’re still just discovering how to dismantle it, and then we actually have to dismantle it.

JE: What was the process like for curating the exhibition? The Art Bank’s collection is so layered and has such a breadth; how did you begin to entangle yourself with it?

OK: When I sent that proposal to the Art Bank, I was in Saskatoon and so I first started by looking through their online database. I knew I wanted to incorporate Carl Beam in this exhibition; he has been such an incredible inspiration to me, and in my art practice, he was one of the first Indigenous artists I was drawn to. I don’t even know why; I just knew I was drawn to him. I wanted his work to be something at the beginning of the exhibition, or even the centre. Pulling some of his works through the collection, I noticed there were other Indigenous artists that were inspired or influenced by his work, but when you take away all the years, you can’t really tell whose work was made before the other. Thinking about the different approach to time for Indigenous folks, we don’t see past, present and future the way the Western world does. Carl Beam has a great quote where he speaks about how in the act of raising the tipi, it’s the raising that one remembers, not the date. In pulling apart some of these works [in the exhibition], if you look chronologically, they were clearly influenced and have pieces taken from another artist, whether it be Carl Beam or someone more recent like Robert Houle, who has a similar practice using collage. As I was collecting and going through all these pieces I realized there was this connection across so many different nations, time periods and circumstances, it really hasn’t changed, but we’ve all responded to it in a different way, and art is a way to connect and create shared experience and knowledge and transcends the way that time is set up in the Western way of thinking about things.

JE: Did any of the works speak to you particularly strongly? Is there one work that you feel anchors the exhibition? Considering your answer to the last question, perhaps it was Carl Beam’s work?

OK: Carl Beam, all of his works, we have a couple from the Art Bank in the exhibition. I don’t know if I’d necessarily say that any piece is the central item– perhaps Shelley Niro’s piece In Her Lifetime (1992), but they all really do tie together. When we were figuring out which artworks should be beside each other, we realized they all work together. There were some that tied to the Oka Crisis or Residential schools, there were some that fit together very well historically, but in terms of the themes they all fit together. The idea that art is a way to tell those teachings and the way that we tell them comes in various forms, through art, language, regular conversation; and that’s how I get those teachings, it’s through conversation with friends, coworkers, Elders, not necessarily through that structured classroom setting. That’s why this exhibition is so important, everyone that is going to come through here will take a bit of that knowledge of how that culture is strengthened.

JE: You’ve touched on it in your previous answers, but the artworks span from the 1970s to the 2010s. How did you approach working with that length of temporality? What narratives emerged from covering that space?

OK: The main narrative is that not much has changed; we can see that issues happening in the 1970s, like racism and land disputes, are still happening today. Water justice, things like that. What I noticed is that we’re pretty much still in the same place, unfortunately, and it’s sort of seeing how artists have taken things even further back from the ‘70s using imagery and re-appropriating it for our own narrative and re-telling it from a more inclusive perspective. A lot of times, there were advertisements that gave an incorrect colonial lens on what Indigenous people are. Taking these images and comparing them to what was going on, and what they mean to these artists is taking that back and re-claiming it. If we were to take the pieces and line them up chronologically, you wouldn’t be able to see a complete “this is when it was the ‘70s” and now it’s getting better; it’s pretty much the same. You see how artists were using art to heal themselves or attempt to heal the public and just educating as well because unfortunately we live in a world where we’re still being controlled. Our trauma and our narrative are still being controlled. The onus is put on Indigenous people to re-traumatize themselves and explain why this is important to see that we haven’t come that far from when Carl Beam was making his art.

The way that we’ve approached all these injustices is through this– not subtle, but a gentle way. When I was doing my proposal, I started reading As We Have Always Done by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. In one of the very first chapters, she talks about how the Elders don’t have any desire to accept or affirm the colonizers’ way of thinking because we have that self-determination. A lot of what this artwork is doing is radical, but it’s not in your face; the way that we approach things is not to be like our oppressors. We are going to do things in a way that helps us; they are not for anyone but us, and hopefully, this is a way to bring a decolonial lens to the rest of the world– if only we bring it to the gallery space first and then to the rest of the world.

JE: Finally, what do you hope folks will take away from their experience with this exhibition? You’ve given a pretty robust answer to this earlier in the interview, but is there any key takeaway?

OK: The main thing [is language], we did incorporate language quite a bit into it, which is something that I try to do in my own work as much as I possibly can. Language is one way to strengthen the culture, and so the more people that learn even one word; that is one tiny piece of the culture that is continuing to be taught, and maybe they will give those teachings to someone else. I’m hoping that people don’t have to understand art, the full history of Canada or Indigenous people and what we’re dealing with today, but if they can take away anything, [it’s that] the culture is still here, thriving and growing. Hopefully, people learn something, just one thing that they can take and teach to the next person.

***

Marianne Brown (Nosy Mag) & Greg Hill, artist included in Madweyàshkà | Like a Wave and co-curator of Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch

Greg A. Hill, *Postcard from Kanata* (2002), ink jet printing. Courtesy of Greg A. Hill.

Postcard from Kanata (2002) is an early work, part of The Kanata Project, an ongoing project by Hill which comprises a series of performances and art objects that aim to raise awareness of the Indigenous origins of the country called Canada. It is a simultaneously serious and tongue-in-cheek project of reclamation, recovery, and disruption that uses art as its medium. Kanata is the Rotinonhsyonni (Haudenosaunee) word for “village,” which was appropriated by Cartier in 1535 upon meeting Rotinonhsyonni people at Stadacona. It is the root of the settler nation’s name, “Canada.”

Hill’s website contains an archive of the many works in this project, including his iconic Kanata flag. Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea), who figures in both Postcard from Kanata and Jeff Thomas’s work in the exhibition (The Imposition of Order), was a Mohawk leader and British Loyalist who fought for the establishment of Six Nations, and after whom Brantford is named.

Marianne Brown: Hi Greg! Thank you so much for taking the time to speak to me. Not only do I love your piece in this exhibition, I also deeply appreciate and admire your curatorial work; 500 Year Itch was a monumental exhibition. I’m excited to dive into your perspective on Madweyàshkà | Like a Wave. What were your first impressions of this exhibition?

Greg A. Hill: I like what Olivia did, in placing my work with Shelley [Niro] and Jeff [Thomas] and having a wall sort of dedicated to our responses to monuments and a lot about Joseph Brant. I also don’t think I’ve been shown with Carl Beam before, so that’s cool!

MB: Postcard from Kanata was one of the earliest works in your Kanata Project, and it explicitly references it: the first line on the postcard is “We are now at the land of Kanata.” Was this the spark that started your multi-year Kanata project or was that already in the works?

GH: It was in the works. I actually added in “Kanata” using Photoshop; my dad had written something else. I did a performance with the flag in 1996, and before that I had started changing the flag for presentations in 1994. But the design I’m still using didn’t come about until the show in which this work was first presented, which took place at the Indian Art Centre Gallery at Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC). That was the first public presentation of the work. I constituted the gallery space in the INAC lobby as the land of Kanata, and on the night of the opening, I acted as a customs officer. We styled the catalogue as a passport, so people had to present it to be stamped and answer a few questions to be granted entry into Kanata.

MB: I’d love to hear more about your creative process. Did your parents send you this postcard out of the blue, or did you ask them to do it specifically for the Kanata Project?

GH: It’s a postcard that they sent to me. I scanned the back of it and created the image that the text is on top of, which is a painting of Joseph Brant by William Berczy (see it here) and a photo of the Champlain monument that is at Kìwekì Point (formerly Nepean Point). What I liked was the irony of the place being called “badlands” or “land bad,” and my dad saying “P.S., Badlands excellent” at the bottom. I thought it was funny.

MB: Do you know why your parents were travelling?

GH: They were on a road trip, and the postcard was a little about their experience of driving cross-country, cutting through Oklahoma back up into Canada to go to a family reunion on my mother’s side, the French side. She was born in Melfort, Saskatchewan. But, that trip also loosely followed her family’s migration path from Quebec into the [United] States and back into Canada, where she was born after what must be at least 10 generations. Her ancestors arrived in Quebec in 1665. The first one to come was named René Rhéaume, and there’s lots of records about him because he was a carpenter who took on too much work, could never finish it, and was constantly getting sued.

MB: That’s amazing that you can find the court documents from back then!

GH: Which is interesting because colonial history is so well recorded, and on the other side there’s erasure happening at the same moment.

MB: Are you able to trace back your dad’s side at all?

GH: Not far. It’s something I’m interested in of course. Unfortunately, most of the family knowledge was in the minds of family members who have passed on. There are some records at Six Nations that I hope to access at some point.

MB: What else did you change on the postcard?

GH: I changed a bunch of text. I changed the text over Joseph Brant’s head because I have it in my mind that the background in the Berczy painting is the Grand River, really close to what is now a landfill. I use that in other works. I added “printed in Kanata” and flipped the second “a” in Canada. The background, the red and blue, is in part inspired by Robert Houle’s Kanata (1992), where he repainted the painting by Benjamin West of the Plains of Abraham and put these parentheses of red and blue panels, that signify, for him, British and French, but in my case, Indigenous and French. I added the hyphen that bleeds in between the two colours because I was really interested in this concept of hyphenated identities at the time.

MB: So in a way, this is a self-portrait: your two identities are in conflict, trying to reconcile or negotiate them. That’s fascinating. Speaking of portraits, you are also captured in one of Jeff Thomas’s works in the exhibition, from his Champlain Series. Donning a feathered headdress made from cereal boxes, your pose mimics that of the famous scout who originally was placed under Champlain (part of the Champlain monument is a “kneeling Indian” known as the Anishinaabe Scout, who was originally in a subservient position under Champlain, but removed thanks to protest by the Assembly of First Nations in the 1990s. The scout is now detached from the monument but looks at it, which is also contested). This brings up three concepts for me: collaboration, performance, and your relationship to monuments. How do these play into your practice?

GH: I never wanted to be a performance artist; I was terrified by the idea of it! But I got dragged into it by my partner at the time and I discovered there was something I liked about it. Performance isn’t just theatre, which is what I didn’t like about my first performance, it’s actions, endurance, repetition. When I realized this, I became more interested in it. A lot of my early performances were collaborative, particularly those around the Champlain monument. I did a performance there that was a live broadcast very early on in the Internet’s existence. The only reason that was possible was because Artengine made it happen. At that time, they were located directly across the river from the monument, so they had a sight line, and built copper antennas that enabled them to capture and live broadcast the performance. With Jeff [Thomas], it was collaboration in our aligned interest in the monument and mutual desire to promote that space as an active performance space.

At that point I had a performance identity based on Joseph Brant, called Joe. Part of the performance was re-enacting four poses. In one pose, I kneeled in the same position as the scout; in another I adopted the warrior pose from the Oka crisis, and in another, the cigar store Indian pose. My outfit was camouflage pants and my cereal box headdress, in reference to the protest and blockade at Kahnesatake in 1990 and my own political awakening, which happened around those events. When Jeff knew I was going to be performing at the monument, he would sometimes document it. He asked me to place the canoe like that, and then I carried it to the scout. It was kind of a ritual to give the scout a canoe. He was supposed to be in a canoe in the original sculpture, but they didn’t cast it because they ran out of money, I guess. That’s why the scout has an unusual pose. When you look at his hands, they’re supposed to be holding the gunnel of a canoe and a paddle.

MB: That’s embarrassing for whoever was in charge!

GH: Yeah! It’s more embarrassing that Champlain is holding the astrolabe upside down.

MB: Very true. What do you think about the recent changes to the space? When I heard they were renovating and renaming it, I assumed they would remove the Champlain monument because of how controversial it is, and its celebration of colonial history. But I checked it out recently, and it’s still there.

GH: Oh, I have lots of thoughts on that! I was on the interpretive committee with the National Capital Commission (NCC), and I could not believe that they had fully intended to put it back exactly where it was, at exactly the same height, despite the progressive changes they were making to the space. I made a huge stink about it! Some people were supportive, especially at the NCC, but from what I heard, they were up against the Board. So there was pressure. In the end, it’s not going back to the same place. They’re keeping Champlain at the point, without a base, which will look really weird since it’s a monument that’s supposed to be looked at from below. But they’re also moving the scout to another location on the point in relation to the monument. When they moved him last, they put him across the road in a garden surrounded by Indigenous plants, and Jeff and I both have taken photos looking from the scout to the monument, and even though he is separate from the monument, he is still gazing at it and exists in relation to it.

MB: Do you think working in Canada’s capital has influenced or exacerbated the political nature of your work? From the outside looking in, I see a mutual influence: the politics clearly influence your work, but the hope would be, and your work with the NCC shows that, that your art also influences policy. Do you think your work would have been different if you had practiced elsewhere?

GH: I hadn’t really thought about that before. I think for sure, that’s the case. There are so many national cultural institutions in the area. Of course, it’s the seat of the Canadian government. It’s such a politically charged space. And all this taking place on unceded Algonquin territory, it’s still not resolved. I guess it’s getting closer. That’s for sure something I was tapping into. You can’t throw a rock without hitting a government institution.

MB: You just curated a major retrospective of Shelley Niro’s work, The 500 Year Itch, which was at the National Gallery of Canada, a government institution that is also a stone’s throw from Âjagemô! Niro’s In Her Lifetime (1991) played a major role in the naming of this exhibition, and I think there is some overlap in themes. Both exhibitions relate to existing, resisting, and healing through time, and both feature works that soften challenging messages and experiences by using humour and irony. Do you think the two exhibitions are in conversation at all?

GH: If you go from one to the other and pay attention, you will hopefully gather that there is an interesting conversation about artists. It’s a shame that it’s two institutions that don’t really cross over.

MB: A lot has changed in the cultural discourse surrounding Indigenous sovereignty and relations in the last 20 years, partly thanks to artists like you. I was wondering, what was it like for you to see this work out in the world again, after twenty years? Does it speak to the culture differently? In the ebb and flow of the wave, where are we now?

GH: As an artist, there’s been a lot of technological progress and I was very interested in that early in my career in media art. Working in Photoshop was revolutionary at the time. I used to manipulate scanned slides. Just scrolling from one part of the image to another would take five minutes. That was the most cutting-edge tech. All that to say, the media has changed, there’s a lot more opportunity for artists now to work with new technology. And there’s also been this wonderful resurgence in the other direction, whether it be quill work, working with animal hide, tanning, all of these beautiful processes that artists are learning and articulating with other technologies. That’s been amazing to be part of as an artist and to witness as a curator. There has been progress, there has been reclamation, and resurgence. All of that is very promising. There have been increments of movement on behalf of institutions in the right direction. But it’s still… It’s still harder than it should be. There’s hope – you have to have hope – and I tend to be a person who takes a longer view of things, but it's hard. There’s a lot of labour that goes into making change from a lot of people.

***

These conversations revealed unique, and at times competing, insights into the themes of Madweyàshkà | Like a Wave. For Kristoff, the wave is a metaphor for temporality, highlighting the fluid and cyclical nature of Indigenous understandings of time. She contends that this wave motif underlines the experience of colonialism for Indigenous peoples in so-called Canada. Describing what is essentially a cycle of progress and regression, she maintains that the narrative of positive chronological progress is false. Hill presents a more optimistic perspective, both in his response to the exhibition and in 500 Year Itch. At once deeply critical of the status quo and stewed in irony, his work reflects his belief that “you have to have hope.”

The variation in mood between the two curators is indicative of the complexity inherent in critically engaging with colonial institutions and systems. While both shows celebrate and uphold the groundbreaking work of Indigenous artists, they similarly engage with how the institutions in which the exhibitions take place are entwined with systems complicit in the oppression of Indigenous voices, cultural practices, language and art. Both exhibitions trouble what is accepted as true and just, making us wonder, where are we in the wave today?

Madweyàshkà | Like a Wave is on view at the Art Bank’s Âjagemô space (150 Elgin Street) until May 19, 2025. Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch was at the National Gallery of Canada in the summer of 2024 and is now on its final stop at the Remai Modern in Saskatoon (April 4 - August 31, 2025).

Ebbs & Flows: Madweyàshkà | Like a Wave

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