This exhibition digs into the vault to showcase a selection of works from the Agnes Etherington Art Centre’s collections of Indigenous arts of Canada. Innovative, politically charged, and challenging contemporary works—including recent acquisitions—are brought into conversation with historical pieces. Renew demonstrates the vibrancy, creativity and continuity of visual traditions, while raising questions about the colonial entanglements that influenced arts of the historical and modern eras.

The exhibition includes works ranging from pieces by Haida, Anishinaabe, Metis-Cree and Mi’kmaq artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to contemporary works by Jane Ash Poitras, Rebecca Belmore, Michael Belmore, Bob Boyer, Wally Dion, David Garneau, Robert Houle, Brian Jungen, Shelley Niro and Edward Poitras.

Norman will introduce a talk by Wally Dion (Saulteaux) on the artist’s Thunderbird Series on Thursday 17 March at 7 pm.

Image: Jane Ash Poitras, T is for Totem Poles, Teepee, 1996, mixed media collage on paper. Purchase, Chancellor Richardson Memorial Fund with the support of the Canada Council’s Acquisition Assistance Program, 1997 (39-017)