10124 96 St, Edmonton, AB T5H 2G5
Nâkatawêyimêw, to take care of yourself. Sâkihitowin, love yourself. In their upcoming show Love Yourself, Ociciwan Contemporary Art Centre explores self love and how that love is sexy. They ask: How do you care for yourself? The show asks artists to think about what self care means to them. Is it love? Is it sexy? What does self care/ love look like? It is colourful, it is sparkly, it is glowing? The show considered the ways in which self love is owning our bodies, loving our bodies. The ways in which it is ancestral. It is magical. It is ever flowing. It is warm and vibrant. It is healing. ————
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Dan Cardinal McCartney
Dan Cardinal McCartney (hey/they) is an interdisciplinary artist and emerging curator who holds a degree from AUArts (2016) in Drawing. Most importantly, they are a full-time caregiver for their sister, Karri. Dan is of Athabasca Chipewyan First Nations with family ties of Mikisew Cree, Metis, and mixed settler lines from Treaty 8 territory, specifically Fort Chipewyan. He is a foster care survivor raised in the northern boreal region of Fort McMurray. As a Two Spirit transgender artist, Dan sifts through patterns of intergenerational trauma and troubles the colonial narrative of hyper individuality. He relates his personal, ongoing reconnection with his family to his yearning for gender euphoria through storytelling. Dan focuses on mixed media collage, painting, moving images, and performance.
Currently, they are the Assistant Director at Stride Gallery in so-called Calgary, AB
Quill Christie-Peters
Quill Christie-Peters is an Anishinaabe arts programmer and self-taught visual artist currently residing in Northwestern Ontario. She is the creator of the Indigenous Youth Residency Program, an artist residency for Indigenous youth that engages land-based creative practices through Anishinaabe artistic methodologies. She holds a Masters degree in Indigenous Governance on Anishinaabe art-making as a process of falling in love and sits on the board of directors for Native Women in the Arts. Her written work can be found in GUTS Magazine and Tea N’ Bannock and her visual work can be found at @raunchykwe.
Evan Ducharme
Evan Ducharme is Metis from St. Ambroise, MB (Treaty 1). With both ancestral and contemporary Michif knowledge, their work examines Metis history and its cultural iconography with a subversion of colonial notions of gender, queerness, and relations to place. Ducharme’s work has been featured in National Geographic, FASHION Magazine, Vogue.com, Quelemia Sparrow’s Skyborn, Tai Amy Grauman’s You Used to Call Me Marie, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute exhibition In America: A Lexicon of Fashion. Ducharme currently lives and creates with gratitude on their home territories in Winnipeg, MB (Treaty 1).