Partners in Art is proud to support Materialized, co-presented by Native Women in the Arts and Critical Distance Centre for Curators in partnership with Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, taking place April 21 – June 3. This project features Joi T. Arcand, Celeste Pedri-Spade, Catherine Blackburn and Nadya Kwandibens, as curated by Ariel Smith. This project will be on view at Suite 122 at 401 Richmond Street West, and a public art billboard featured at 180 Shaw Street; for more information, read below or visit criticaldistance.ca.  

Combining portrait photography with elements from adornment arts, textiles, sculpture, and customary Indigenous art practices, Materialized examines themes of intergenerational memory, familial narrative, and decolonization through the work of artists Joi T. Arcand, Celeste-Pedri Spade, Catherine Blackburn, and Nadya Kwandibens. By using their craft to reclaim portraiture as a form of self-expression and self-determination, each artist resists the colonial metanarratives contained in settler-made images of Indigenous subjects.