Indigenous Beauty | Parenting as a Working Artist

with Skeena Reece and Ray Natraoro
Hosted by Shadae Rose Johnson

REGISTER

Indigenous Beauty is a program series presented by the Vancouver Art Gallery to amplify and centre Indigenous voices, providing a platform for Indigenous peoples to define themselves.

Join us for our next gathering with Tsimshian/Gitska and Cree artist Skeena Reece and Squamish and Northern Tutchone master carver Ray Natraoro. Hosted by Shadae Rose Johnson, Community Relations Coordinator of Indigenous Programs, this conversation will illuminate our guests’ journeys as professional artists, balancing sovereign parenting practices with modern-day Indigenous lifestyles. Both Reece and Natraoro thrive on sharing their culture through their art practices. How does parenting influence or become part of their creative processes?

This event aims to elevate a discussion around parenting, mothering, oppression, resistance and reclaiming sovereign Indigenous lifestyles via raising families and art-making. We will consider parenting as a practice of sharing ancestral stories, culture and traditions that will create a lasting legacy for the next seven generations.

This talk will be presented on Zoom and streamed live to the Gallery’s Facebook account here »

Questions? Submit them during the Zoom presentation using the Q&A function. You can also engage with your fellow attendees and panelists during the event using the Chat function.

New to Zoom? Learn how to register and attend a webinar here »

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

As this series evolves, we invite Indigenous peoples from across Turtle Island to submit their program proposals for participation in an upcoming Indigenous Beauty presentation.

For more information and to submit your proposal, please contact Shadae Rose Johnson, Community Relations Coordinator of Indigenous Programs at sjohnson@vanartgallery.bc.ca.

Walk in Beauty. #VAGIndigenousBeauty

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Skeena Reece is a Tsimshian/Gitksan and Cree artist based on the West Coast of British Columbia. She has garnered national and international attention, most notably for Raven: On the Colonial Fleet (2010), her bold installation and performance work presented as part of the celebrated group exhibition Beat Nation. Her multidisciplinary practice includes performance art, spoken word, humour, “sacred clowning,” writing, singing, songwriting, video and visual art. She studied media arts at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design and was the recipient of the British Columbia award for Excellence in the Arts (2012) and the Viva Award (2014). For her work on Savage (2010), in collaboration with Lisa Jackson, Reece won a Leo Award for Best Short Film, Golden Sheaf Award for Best Multicultural Film, ReelWorld Outstanding Canadian Short Film, Leo Awards for Best Actress and Best Editing. She participated in the 17th Sydney Biennale, Australia. Recent exhibitions include: The Sacred Clown & Other Strangers (2015), a solo exhibition of her performance costumes and documentation at Urban Shaman Contemporary Aboriginal Art, Winnipeg; Moss at Oboro Gallery, Montreal (2017); and a solo show at James Madison University in Virginia.

Ray Natraoro (whose ancestral name is Ses siiyam, which is pronounced “Sess-see-yam”) is from the Squamish Nation maternally and from the Northern Tutchone tribe located in Northern Yukon paternally. He often will use both sides of his family history as inspiration to transform objects into art. Natraoro descends from a seventh generation Squamish Nation canoe builder’s family and first sought carving guidance at the age of five from his late maternal great grandfather. Actively working as an independent artist since 1994, Natraoro now specializes in carving poles, house posts, dugout canoes, masks, bent boxes, rattles, pendants and paddles. His family has been carving canoes for over a century, and Natraoro himself has carved over 25 canoes to date. Natraoro thrives on sharing his culture. He believes that by using the many traditional teachings from Elders and ancestors in his community, his art will reach many people. He embraces the past and always seeks ways to explore culture and traditions by utilizing a contemporary style and design, utilizing today to capture past memories.