Ywahentetha’. “We put you before others in our spirits.” As curators, we believe our role is to bring artists and their works into dialogue with each other in such a way as to amplify their power, the love that resides in and emanates from them. When we were imagining this exhibition, we started by selecting artists: Rebecca Belmore, Dayna Danger, France Gros-Louis Morin, Shelley Niro, Sylvie Paré, Katherine Takpannie, and Tania Willard. We knew we wanted to work with them because we hold them in high esteem – we love them for what they do. Then, as we were discussing and developing the direction of the exhibition, we decided to root it directly in this idea of love and honour. Based on this desire to hold high these artists that are dear in our hearts and minds, we favoured a curatorial gesture instead of a theme.
In this way, love has come to be at the centre of this project, both through the relationships it has nurtured and the works it brings to light. We’ve explored this love through family, through intergenerational and sometimes imagined relationships, as well as through our relationship with the land. We also acknowledge that, around those relations, there can be grief and pain. Those emotions can be attended to with love and care. With this exhibition, we want to invite you to experience the emotional potency of these works, the power so gently and thoughtfully shared with us by the artists. When you are there with us, viewing, we are all participants, generating the Ywahentetha’ that is so urgent to share.
Greg A. Hill and Julia Caron Guillemette
This exhibition is supported by l’Entente de développement culturel entre le gouvernement du Québec et la Ville de Québec.
The creation of Sylvie Paré’s A’etshiahton’t. On vous a réduit en carte postale, de vous j’en fais des géants, 2024-2025 was supported by the Conseil des arts de Montréal.
Biographies
Rebecca Belmore
Rebecca Belmore (Anishinaabe) creates sculpture, installation, video, photography and performance. Central to her work is the body in relation to history, place and Indigeneity. Recent monographic exhibitions include Turbulent Water, Griffith University, Brisbane; and Facing the Monumental, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Recent major international exhibitions include the 2022 Whitney Biennial, 2019 Istanbul Biennial, and documenta 14. Belmore has been awarded the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts and the Gershon Iskowitz Prize, among many others. She holds honorary doctorates from Université Laval, Quebec City; Nova Scotia College of Art and Design; Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver; and Ontario College of Art & Design University, Toronto.
Dayna Danger
Dayna Danger (they/them) is a Two-Spirit, Indigiqueer, Métis-Saulteaux-Polish, visual artist, hide tanner, drummer, and beadworker. Danger’s art practice is an act of reclaiming space and power over society’s projections of sexualities and representation. This transpires in Danger’s art through their intentionally large-scale images that places importance on women-identified, Two-Spirit, Transgender, and non-binary people. Their art uses symbolic references to kink communities to critically interrogate visibility and rejection. Danger centers Kin and practicing consent to build artworks that create a suspension of reality wherein complex dynamics of sexuality, gender, and power are exchanged.
France Gros-Louis Morin
A graduate of Université Laval, France Gros-Louis Morin is a visual artist who won an inter-university photography competition and exhibited at the Old Port of Québec for the 400th anniversary of the city. She has participated in several group exhibitions, including 400 ans de résistance and Les piliers du monde. After a 15-year break dedicated to her family, she returns with the Yahndawa’ project, exploring natural photographic development techniques. Her work, once militant, now addresses the sacred link between body and land, expressing a new sensitivity and fragility.
Shelley Niro
Shelley Niro is a member of the Turtle Clan, Bay of Quinte Mohawk Six Nations Grand River Reserve. She is a practicing artist, concentrating on painting, photography and film. In 2017 Niro was awarded the Canada Council for the Arts Governor General Award in Visual Art, the Reveal Award from the Hnatyshyn Foundation, Dreamcatcher’s Visual Award and the Scotiabank Photography Award. She became an honorary elder in the Indigenous Curatorial Collective. Niro is conscious the impact post-colonial mediums have had on Indigenous people. Like many artists from different Native communities, she works relentlessly presenting people in realistic and explorative portrayals.
Sylvie Paré
Sylvie Paré (Wendat/Québécoise) is a visual artist from Loretteville, Québec. She was a cultural agent at the Jardin des Premières-Nations du Jardin botanique de Montréal for 20 years, where living culture and visual arts were integral parts of cultural programming. As guest curator, museographer, and artist, she produced the exhibition Oubliées ou disparues: Akonessen, Zytia, Tina, Marie et les autres at the Maison de la culture Frontenac in 2015. She is currently pursuing her artistic research into the notion of legacies and intimacy in a museum context. She is based in Montreal.
Katherine Takpannie
Katherine Takpannie is an urban Inuk who lives in Ottawa, on the unceded and unsurrendered land of the Anishinaabe Algonquin peoples. She is a self-taught photographer whose visual language expands out from portraiture to include lush landscapes, and political activism. In 2020, she was the recipient of the National Gallery of Canada’sNew Generation Photography Award. Since then, her artworks have been displayed both nationally and internationally and are published in several magazines. She participated in exhibitions at the Biennale d’art contemporain autochtone (BACA), City of Ottawa Art Collection, Art Gallery of Guelph, PAMA Peel Art Gallery + Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Art, and Olga Korper Gallery.
Tania Willard
Tania Willard is a mixed Secwépemc and settler artist whose research intersects with land-based art practices. Her practice activates connection to land, culture, and family, centering art as an Indigenous resurgent act, through collaborative projects such as BUSH Gallery and support of language revitalization in Secwépemc communities. Willard’s work is included in the collections of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Forge Project NY, Kamloops Art Gallery, Belkin Gallery and the Anchorage Museum, among others. She received the Hnatyshyn Foundation’s Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art (2016) and was named a Forge Project Fellow for her land-based, community-engaged artistic practice (2022).
Greg A. Hill
Greg A. Hill is a Kanyen’keháka member of the Six Nations of the Grand River. Currently based in Chelsea, QC, he is a multidisciplinary artist and curator and has presented his work in exhibitions and performances across North America and abroad. His curatorial work spans nearly three decades, including his post at the National Gallery of Canada as the Senior Curator of Indigenous Art where he significantly increased the visibility of Indigenous Art in their exhibitions and collections.
Julia Caron Guillemette
Julia Caron Guillemette is an independent curator, author and art historian based in Quebec City. She has been assistant artistic director for Manif d’art, curator-educator at the Musée d’art contemporain de Baie-Saint-Paul and cultural mediator at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec. She holds a master’s degree in art history from Université Laval and has published in several specialized magazines. She curated L’écho des contes (Jardin d’hiver 4, 2025), Cooke-Sasseville: contre toute attente (2025) and co-curated Ostentation (2022).






















