Are you an Indigenous artist and... A Student or alumni of OCAD U? An Indigenous community member? Considering attending or applying? Looking to get feedback on your work or ideas? Would you like to connect and visit with other Indigenous artists in a virtual space?
If you answered ‘Yes’ to one or more of the above questions, you are invited to join us for: Wáhlu Noondaaptóone: I Talked From Far Away
Formerly, the Open Critique program, the objective of this program is to provide Indigenous students, alumni and community members with the opportunity for dialogue and relationship building with other Indigenous artists, including OCAD U faculty, alumni and special guests. Participants are encouraged to share their ideas, current works, or join to visit with other Indigenous artists in a virtual space. This program allows folks seeking feedback from other Indigenous artists the opportunity to share projects and processes related to coursework as well as their professional practice. See upcoming sessions below!
This program is open to: Indigenous OCAD U (students, faculty, staff and alumni) and Indigenous community members.
Thursday March 31 3-5PM with Natalie King, Greg Staats and Justine Woods
Natalie King is a queer interdisciplinary Anishinaabe artist, facilitator, and member of Timiskaming First Nation. King's arts practice ranges from video, painting, sculpture, and installation as well as community engagement, curation, and arts administration. King is currently a Programming Coordinator at Xpace Cultural Centre in Tkaronto. Often involving portrayals of queer femmes, King’s works are about embracing the ambiguity and multiplicities of identity within the Anishinaabe queer femme experience(s). King's practice operates from a firmly critical, anti-colonial, non-oppressive, and future-bound perspective, reclaiming the realities of lived liv es through frameworks of desire and survivance. Learn more about Natalie's work here!
Greg Staats Skarù:reˀ/ Kanien’kehá:ka, Hodinöhsö:ni’. b. 1963, Ohsweken, Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. A Toronto based artist whose Hodinöhsö:ni restorative aesthetic employs mnemonics of condolence and performative burdens articulated in visual forms that hold body and place including: oral transmission, text works, embodied wampum, photographic, sculpture, installation and video. Staats' practice conceptualizes Land as monument embodied within a continuum of relational placemaking with his on-reserve lived experience, trauma, and the explorations of ceremonial orality. Staats’ lens based language documents cycles of return towards a complete Onkwehón:we neha [our original ways] positionality, reciprocity and worldview. Active since 1981 studied Applied Photography, Sheridan College, ON is the recipient of the Duke and Duchess of York Prize in Photography. Solo exhibitions include: articule, Montreal, Kelowna Art Gallery, Urban Shaman Gallery, Winnipeg, MN, Tom Thomson Gallery, McMaster Museum of Art, KWAG, Mercer Union, Gallery TPW, G44, Trinity Square Video/Images Festival. Galerie Séquence, QC. Group exhibitions include; AGYU, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, National Gallery of Canada, Varley Art Gallery of Markham [OAAG award 2019], MOCNA, Sante Fe. Staats served as Faculty for two Aboriginal VA Residencies, Banff Centre: Archive Restored (2009) and Towards Language (2010). Staats’ works are held in public, private and corporate collections. Upcoming solo exhibitions: Art Gallery of Ontario, OPENING OCTOBER 23, 2021, CONTACT Photo Festival at Todmorden Mills. [2021] Art Gallery of Hamilton, ON (2023) and Agnes Etherington Art Centre, ON (2025). Staats was a finalist shortlisted for the 2021 Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography from the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography at Harvard University and the SCOTIABANK Photography Award [2018 and 2021].
Justine Woods (she/her) is a garment artist, designer, creative scholar and educator based in Tkaronto (Toronto, Ontario). She is a current Doctoral Student in the Media and Design Innovation PhD program at X University (formally Ryerson) and holds a Master of Design in Interdisciplinary Art, Media and Design from OCAD University and a Bachelor of Design in Fashion Design from X University. Justine’s research/design practice centres Indigenous fashion technologies and garment-making as a practice-based method of inquiry towards re-stitching alternative worlds that prioritize Indigenous resurgence and liberation. Her work foregrounds all of the relationships that make up her identity as a Penetanguishene Aabitaawikwe; an identity she has inherited from her family and her Aabitaawizininiwag Ancestors. Justine is a descendant of the St. Onge and Berger-Beaudoin families. Her Ancestors come from Drummond Island (in what is now known as Michigan) and were relocated in 1828 to Penetanguishene, Ontario where they built diasporic roots with their kin and community that continue to hold strong to this present day. Justine was born and raised in Tiny, Ontario and is a member of what is known as the Georgian Bay Métis Community.
Click here to register for Wáhlu Noondaaptóone: I Talked From Far Away with Natalie King, Greg Staats and Justine Woods on Thursday March 31 from 3-5PM!