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Water Protectors

February 17, 2023 - September 10, 2023

Third Floor

 

This exhibition brings together artists whose works explore the importance of water from Indigenous perspectives.  Artists in the exhibition are Christian Chapman, Ruth Cuthand, Melissa General, Tanya Harnett, Roy Kakegamic, Glenna Matoush and Roy Thomas.

Through their works, these artists explore how water is a sacred, living entity in need of care and protection. They communicate individual and collective relationships to water, highlighting how water flows deep into Indigenous memory, knowledge, and identity. 

Through their use of storytelling and critical reflection, they are able to honour their cultural connections to water while drawing attention to systemic inequities of unsafe drinking water within Indigenous communities. 

In bringing these works together, this exhibition calls attention to the need to care for the earth’s most sacred resource. This exhibition pays special tribute to those who take up that important work and honours all Water Protectors across Turtle Island.

Curated by Danielle Printup & Julie Rae Tucker

Danielle Printup

Danielle Printup is a Hodinohso:ni / Anishnaabe arts administrator and curator from Kitigan Zibi Anishnabeg, QC, with maternal roots in Ohsweken, ON. She has Bachelor of Honors in Art History from the University of Guelph (2012) and later interned at the National Gallery of Canada before completing the RBC Indigenous Training Program in Museum Practices at the Canadian Museum of History. She has worked at Galerie SAW Gallery, the Indigenous Art Centre and the City of Ottawa’s Public Art Program. She currently works as the Indigenous Cultural Engagement Coordinator at Carleton University Art Gallery. Most recently, Printup curated the group exhibition Future Rivers: Film and Video from the Desert River, which will be presented during the summer of 2021 at the Carleton University Art Gallery.

In this exhibit

Roy Thomas, Water Clan, 1992, lithograph on paper, 20/115, 50.0 cm x 63.0 cm, Gift of the Estate of Elizabeth Gillespie, 2003

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