The exhibition, Storied Telling, features photographic works by Canadian artists, whose images present as lens-based performance. The photographs reflect a performative nature, taken as video stills or documentation of performance art or presented as elaborate figurative compositions within settings that are culturally political, perhaps bordering on the fantastical, or are imagined recreations of historic scenarios. In their adornment and positioning within their environments, the subjects of the photographs become powerfully iconographic. The resulting images are rife with story, reflecting diverse narratives that are poetic, political, surreal, spiritual, or perhaps even mythic; stories that inform and speak to cultural and diaspora identities that are constantly producing and reproducing themselves anew through transformation and difference.

Born in Saskatchewan and now based in Winnipeg, Lori Blondeau is a nêhiyawak (Plains Cree)/Saulteaux/Métis artist working primarily in performance art, but also in installation and photography. Much of Blondeau's work revolves around the misrepresentation of First Nations women in popular and media culture. In this series, Asiniy Iskwew, nêhiyawak for “Rock Woman”, Blondeau explains that she “celebrate(s) and give homage to Plains Indigenous rock formations, significant ancient sites created for sacred and rite-of-passage ceremonies and for recording battles and histories. I draw from oral histories of Mistaseni — a 400-tonne sacred boulder marking an important Indigenous gathering place that the Saskatchewan government dynamited in 1966 to make room for a man-made lake. Capturing performative interventions in the landscape, I stand atop rocks, draped in blood-red velvet cloth, reflecting the resilience of Indigenous cultures.”ⁱ

Meryl McMaster is an Ottawa-based artist with nêhiyaw (Plains Cree), Métis, British and Dutch ancestry. Her lens-based practice incorporates the production of hand crafted materials and performance forming a synergy that transports the viewer out of the ordinary and into a space of contemplation and introspection. She explores the self in relation to land, lineage, history, culture and the more-than-human world, creating photographic narratives that delve into the fantastical and read like legends.

Mariam Magsi was born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan and is currently based in Toronto. Her ethnic heritage is Baloch and Punjabi. Working in photography, video, performance art and installation, Magsi uses inherited textiles, cultural paraphernalia, family archives, food and orally transmitted intergenerational stories, to unpack themes related to socio-political constructions of identity, intergenerational trauma, gender and migration. Magsi’s projects include artistic and historic investigations into the practice of veiling (Purdah), an ongoing creative exploration of her Baloch identity and ancestry (Daughter of the Tribe), as well as artistic research into the food and hospitality cultures of South Asia. In the series, Daughter and Purdah, Magsi creates space for newcomer expression and experience in Canadian landscapes.

Xiao Han is a multidisciplinary artist and curator from Wuhan, China, now based in Treaty 6 Territory in Saskatoon. Han's research explores diaspora identity, contemporary gender issues, and the relationship between humans, the environment, and the Indigenous land. Through visual art and curatorial practice, Han has produced numerous projects investigating the Chinese-Canadian restaurant history, the identity of home, and the aesthetic of community relationships. These images, from the artist’s Yee Clun – The Lost Stories Project, presents the artist’s recreations or imaginings of Chinese-Canadian experience in Saskatchewan history. Yee Clun, a Regina restaurant owner, came to prominence in 1924, fighting a Saskatchewan law that required Chinese-Canadians to secure a municipal license to hire "white women" as employees. Public hearings were held that reflected not only the racial prejudices of the time, but also significant support for a well-respected businessman and member of the community, reflecting a story of racial discrimination, but also of the courage of Yee Clun to challenge the law and of others who stood up for his cause.ⁱⁱ https://loststories.ca/regina/

Catherine Blackburn, member of the English River First Nation (Dënesųłinë́) in Saskatchewan and currently based in Toronto, is a multidisciplinary artist and jeweller, whose common themes address Canada's colonial past that are often prompted by personal narratives. Her work grounds itself in the Indigenous feminine and explores Indigenous sovereignty, decolonization and representation, whether as collaborative fashion objects that embrace traditional knowledge in innovative ways and notably grace Indigenous fashion walkways to contemporary beaded objects or adornment sculptures that are performed and transform the wearer. In the video and photographs of the work, Unsettle, the artist explains, “Unsettle explores themes of power and reclamation through the duality of Indigenous presence and erasure. This wearable work shifts tactics of erasure into spiritual embodiment: celebrating the ways in which Indigenous bodies refuse to be minimized by the oppressiveness of colonialism.”ⁱⁱⁱ

Laura St. Pierre is a Fransaskois visual artist, based in Saskatoon, SK, Treaty 6 Territory, who works with photography, installation, performance and video from an ecological perspective. These images, from her series The Sower/ Le Semeuse, presents a lone figure, the Sower, with “makeshift ecosystems … in desolate urban spaces”, attempting “to reanimate their lifeless surroundings with small pockets of greenery”.^iv

Curated by Jennifer McRorie, Organized by Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery Touring Saskatchewan through the Organization of Saskatchewan Arts Councils

Exhibition support is provided by Wells Camera

i. Lori Blondeau, artist statement, accessed on https://resilienceproject.ca/en/artists/lori-blondeau, January 31, 2025.

ii. Lost Stories of Regina, accessed on https://loststories.ca/regina/, January 31, 2025.

iii. Catherine Blackburn, Artist Statement, accessed on www.catherineblackburn.com on January 31, 2025.

iv. Sandra Fraser, borderLINE 2020 Biennial of Contemporary Art, Remai Modern & Art Gallery of Alberta, accessed on www.laurastpierre.com on January 31, 2025.