Indigenous Art Intensive 2023: Artist Talks and Panel Discussion with Mariel Belanger, Peter Morin and Tsēmā Igharas

The annual Indigenous Art Intensive gathers artists, curators, writers and scholars to engage in contemporary ideas rooted in Indigenous art-making.

Join us at the University Theatre on Wednesday, May 31 from 1:30 to 3:00 PM for artist talks and a panel discussion with Mariel Belanger, Peter Morin and Tsēmā Igharas, facilitated by Tania Willard.

About the Artists:

Peter Morin is a grandson of Tahltan Ancestor Artists. Morin’s artistic offerings can be organized around four themes: articulating Land/Knowing, articulating Indigenous Grief/Loss, articulating Community Knowing, and understanding the Creative Agency/Power of the Indigenous body. The work takes place in galleries, in community, in collaboration, and on the land. All of the work is informed by dreams, Ancestors, Family members, and performance art as a research methodology. Initially trained in lithography, Morin’s 20 years of artistic practice moves from printmaking to poetry to button blanket making to installation drum making to bead work to performance art. Throughout his 20 year exhibition and making history, Morin has focused upon his matrilineal inheritances in homage to the matriarchal structuring of the Tahltan Nation, and prioritizes Cross-Ancestral collaborations as a strategy for interrogating and dismantling the colonialism. Morin was longlisted for the Brink and Sobey Awards, in 2013 and 2014, respectively. In 2016, Morin received the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Outstanding Achievement by a Canadian Mid-Career Artist. Morin is working as the Graduate Program Director of the Interdisciplinary Master’s in Art, Media and Design program (IAMD) at OCADU, and the Advisor to the VP Academic on Indigenous Knowledge, Practice and Production. Morin currently holds a tenured appointment in the Faculty of Arts at the Ontario College of Art and Design University in Toronto. Peter is the son of Janelle Creyke (Crow Clan, Tahltan Nation) and Pierre Morin (French Canadian).

Mariel Belanger is a PhD student at Queens University in Cultural Studies researching ethnographic historical documents and recordings to map the archives for family specific song, story and lived experiences of the Syilx people at the Head of the Lake. Mariel’s research centre’s identity through the lens of Indigenous ways of knowing and being in the world, customary law, Indigenous feminism, smi7may7 Syilx performance theory, intersectionality, the effects of being ‘half’ and exploring how cultural identity is rebuilt through oral history and performance practice. Mariel’s MFA thesis “The Earth Re:Claimed Her. A continuing study of Blood Memory, Embodied Story Practice and Personal Governance” won her an SSHRC scholarship and was the foundation to bringing new histories to light. Mariel has travelled to Chile from Temuco to Socorama demonstrating a sqilxw-centric land-based visitor protocol and performing how colonial violence still affects the bodies of Indigenous women through her performance Illegal: Let Us Live co-authored by the late Dr. Greg Younging. In 2022, Mariel won a CGS SSHRC Doctoral Scholarship and the Teyonkwayenawá:kon – Queens University Graduate Scholarship. Mariel’s writing can be found in the chapter “Sqilxw Woman: She Brings Bundles” in the forthcoming book Unsettling Education: Decolonizing and Indigenizing the Land, “Respons(A)bility: Weaving Words of Responsibility Through Story” in the online journal Revue Percees, “stəqpistns iʔ pqlqin / kihew omīkwan Eagle Feather” in New Directions for Theorizing in Qualitative Inquiry, “Experiencing Resonance as a Practice of Ritual Engagement” co-authored chapter in Research and Reconciliation, and alt.Theatre Cultural Diversity and the Stage Magazine Vol 14.1 through 14.3 as guest curator and writer.

Tsēmā Igharas is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist, mentor, mentee and descendant of Tāłtān Matriarchy. Using strategies of care and resistance Tsēmā creates work that connects materials to mine sites and bodies to the land. This practice cites her Indigenous mentorships, Potlatch, studies in visual culture, and time in the mountains. She has studied at K’saan, Emily Carr University of Art and Design, and earned an Interdisciplinary Masters of Art Media and Design from OCADu. Tsēmā has exhibited and performed on Turtle Island, and beyond.