Love Medicine – Curator and Artist Talk

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About

Please join us for a conversation with the curator of Love Medicine, Dr. Michelle McGeough, with guest artists Dayna Danger, Van Racine, and Adrian Stimson.

Curated by Métis art historian Dr. Michelle McGeough, Love Medicine aims to create a space of recognition and community, offering an artistic embrace in response to the historical traumas inflicted by the settler nation-state on 2spirit/Indigiqueer bodies. This exhibition is founded on the belief that love, expressed through artistic acts, is a powerful force for healing and affirmation. It features approximately 202 Indigenous 2SLGBTQIA+ artists whose works touch on various time periods and regions, and explore love as healing, community and belonging, affirmation and embrace, and resilience and identity. Love Medicine features new and existing works by: Barry Ace, asinnajaq, Melcolm Beaulieu, Katherine Boyer, Dayna Danger, Theo J. Cuthand, Rosalie Favell, Kylie Fineday, Terry Haines, Robert Houle, Kablusiak, Jake Kimble, Cheyenne Rain LeGrande ᑭᒥᐘᐣ, George Littlechild, Aiyyana Maracle, Kent Monkman, Peter Morin, Norval Morrisseau, Lisa Myers, Van Racine, Adrian Stimson, Nabidu Taylor.

Bios

Dayna Danger (they/them) is a Two-Spirit, Indigiqueer, Métis-Saulteaux-Polish, visual artist, hide tanner, drummer, and beadworker. Danger’s art practice is an act of reclaiming space and power over society’s projections of sexualities and representation. This transpires in Danger’s art by their intentionally large-scale images that place importance on women-identified, Two-Spirit, transgender, and non-binary people. Their art uses symbolic references to kink communities to critically interrogate visibility and rejection. Danger centers Kin and practicing consent to build artworks that create a suspension of reality wherein complex dynamics of sexuality, gender, and power are exchanged.

Van Racine is a 2Spirit French-Anishinaabe artist with a multidisciplinary focus on new media, linguistics, and beadwork. They are a member of Beaverhouse FN and is currently based in Tiohtiá:ke/Mooniyang (Montréal). Racine draws visual inspiration from their beadwork and weaving practice for video game development. Blending theoretical linguistics with traditional and non-traditional practices, they explore underlying relationships between linguistic theory and Anishinaabe digital media with intentional focus on Zaagi’idiwin (love).

Adrian Stimson is a member of the Siksika Nation, Treaty 7, Alberta. He holds a BFA with distinction from the Alberta University of the Arts and an MFA from the University of Saskatchewan. His work has been exhibited in international biennales, including Photo Quai (Paris, 2009), The Shoreline Dilemma (Toronto, 2019), and Narin (Sydney, 2020). His bison paintings are melancholic, memorializing, political, and sometimes whimsical. His performance art explores identity construction through recurring personas such as Buffalo Boy and The Shaman Exterminator, while his installation work examines the residential school experience, genocide, loss, and resilience. Stimson has created numerous public artworks across Canada, including Spirit of Alliance (Saskatoon), Bison Sentinels (Regina), and the forthcoming National Monument to Canada’s Mission in Afghanistan (Ottawa). His honours include the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts (2018), the REVEAL Indigenous Arts Award (2017), the Alumni of Influence Award from the University of Saskatchewan (2020), the Blackfoot Visual Arts Award (2009), the Alberta Centennial Medal (2005), and the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal (2003).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Love Medicine is generously supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council; Thinking Through the Museum – Museum Queeries Cluster (Concordia University), the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Decolonial and Transformational Indigenous Art Practices (University of Victoria), Curating Change: Centring Decolonization, Equity, and Social Justice in Exhibition Practice (Nova Scotia School of Art and Design), the University of Winnipeg, Concordia University, and the University of Winnipeg Research Office.

Logo featuring a black maple leaf and the text “Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada” alongside its French translation, with a large “Canada” and a small Canadian flag on the right. A black circle with the words "Curating Change" in bold white letters arranged in a circular path around the center, separated by two white dots.