Members Event: Curator Tour of Death Boat and Other Stories
Roger Aksadjuak, Death Boat, ceramic, 2008. Photo: Don Hall.
About
Join curator Felicia Gay for an exclusive members-only tour of Death Boat and Other Stories: The Kampelmacher Memorial Collection of Indigenous Art before the public opening.
From 6 to 6:45 PM, members will get an in-depth look at the exhibition and hear firsthand insights about the artworks, artists, and themes that shape this powerful and diverse collection.
Following the tour, members are invited to attend the public reception in Craft Services Café by Crave and a curator talk by Felicia Gay in the Shumiatcher Theatre.
This special evening offers members early access and meaningful engagement with some of the newest additions to the Gallery’s permanent collection.
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ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Death Boat and Other Stories: The Kampelmacher Memorial Collection of Indigenous Art was curated by Felicia Gay and organized & circulated by the MacKenzie Art Gallery, and will be on view from 18 July 2025 to 2 May 2027.
Death Boat and Other Stories investigates interpretations of transformation in Indigenous cultural art practices across Turtle Island. This exhibition features artworks drawn from the Kampelmacher Collection, which offer multifaceted worldviews situated in Indigenous knowledges and relationality. The themes of transitional space, place, and time inform a beautifully situated and embodied visual story.
Collectors Thomas Druyan and Alice Ladner began acquiring Indigenous art in 1992, amassing well over 1,000 works. The couple named the collection after Thomas Druyan’s parents, Wolf and Sala Kampelmacher. The collection illustrates myriad artistic expressions from across North America. As MacKenzie curator Felicia Gay researched the collection, she was strongly drawn to Inuk artist Roger Aksadjuak’s ceramic artwork Death Boat (2008). Gay understood Death Boat as an animate being; it spoke to her, in its own way, prompting the themes in the exhibition. At first glance, the death boat appears to represent a funerary practice, perhaps representing the transition from life to death or the continuation of life after death. As a vessel, it is carrying not only a person, but also a story. The spaces that humans, animals, and other sentient beings inhabit are temporal but never fixed. To be Indigenous is to know profoundly what transformation is.
ABOUT THE CURATOR
Photo: Carey Shaw
Felicia Gay is muskego inninu iskew (Swampy Cree) from waskiyganeek (Cumberland House, SK) and belongs to the Opaskwayak Cree Nation, The Pas, MB. Her curatorial practice began in 2004 after graduating with a BA (Honours) in Art History from the University of Saskatchewan. In 2006 Gay co-founded The Red Shift Gallery with Joi Arcand in Saskatoon, SK. Gay returned to the University of Saskatchewan to earn an MA in Art History in 2010. She is a PhD candidate researching Indigenous curatorial practice at the University of Regina. In 2020, she received the SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Scholarship as a doctoral candidate. From 2019 to 2022, she was the MacKenzie Art Gallery’s first Mitacs Curatorial Fellow in partnership with the Univ
ersity of Regina, before joining the MacKenzie Art Gallery as Curator in 2024. Her most recent curatorial projects include the nationally touring retrospective The Art of Faye HeavyShield (2022–2024) and miskwaabik animiiki—Powerlines: The Art of Norval Morrisseau (2022). She received the 2018 Saskatchewan Arts Award for Leadership for her community-based curatorial practice.