OCICIWAN
Contemporary Art Collective
[otsi-tsi-wan]
Ociciwan is an inanimate Plains Cree noun relating to current or river, translated to mean the current comes from there. The name references the North Saskatchewan River that has brought many people over time to the region. It conveys an energy of engagement with Indigenous contemporary culture, linking present with the past and the future.
Mission Statement
Ociciwan supports Indigenous contemporary art, experimental creative practices, and innovative research.
Mandate
Based in the region of Edmonton, Alberta, Ociciwan supports the work of Indigenous contemporary artists and designers and engages in contemporary critical dialogue. We value artistic collaboration and foster the awareness of Indigenous contemporary art practices.
Core Collective
The core Collective will focus on a minimum of three - four projects per year in the areas of art exhibition, research, public art and awareness surrounding Indigenous contemporary art.
Core members
Halie Finney
Halie Finney is a multidisciplinary artist who understands her Metis heritage through her family's experiences and memories of the Lesser Slave Lake region, which is where generations of her family have resided in. To mourn a person is also to mourn the landscape that shaped them.Through a cast of characters Halie explores feelings of grief, comfort, and other emotions that come with loss and change. She pulls from her and her family’s memories and stories of their home and forms disjointed narratives with the purpose of showing the liminality between generations and the constant but ever changing landscape that they all share.She tells these stories through drawings, paintings, installations, performances, and other objects.They are fluid and loose like a memory and result in a fantasy-like copy of her family’s home.Halie received a BFA from the Alberta University of Art and Design in 2017. She is a core member of Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective and has shown at galleries such as Latitude 53 (2019) and the ArtGallery of Alberta (2020) and has taught at MacEwan University (2020). Currently,Halie lives in Edmonton, Alberta.
Jess Johns
Jessica Johns is a queer nehiyaw aunty with English-Irish ancestry and a member of Sucker Creek First Nation. She is an interdisciplinary artist and writer whose debut novel, Bad Cree, was a Canada Reads finalist, and won the WGA Fiction Prize, Alex Award, and MacEwan Book of the Year Prize.
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. 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. He is interested in the genre of horror through a contemporary, Indigenous lens.
Currently, Dan is a Co-Artistic Director at Stride Gallery in so-called Calgary, AB.
Tiffany Shaw
Tiffany is a public art artist, independent curator, and a registered architect with Reimagine Architects. Her work gathers notions of craft, memory and atmosphere. Her practice is often guided by communal interventions as a way to engage a lifted understanding of place. Shaw was born in Calgary and raised in Edmonton, Alberta with Métis descent from Fort McMurray, Alberta.
Alberta Rose W./ Ingniq
Alberta obtained her BFA with distinction from the Alberta University of the Arts (formerly ACAD) and completed an Indigenous Preparatorial practicum at The Banff Centre. Alberta is of mixed settler/Inuvialuit heritage, and often creates work that reflects both aspects of her cultural identity, as well as broader social issues related to Indigenous people today. She has completed residencies at the Banff Centre, Contemporary Calgary, and participated in Memory Keepers ll in Charlottetown, PEI. Her work has been shown in Banff, Toronto, Charlottetown, and Calgary.
Staff
Adrienne Larocque, Executive Director
Adrienne Larocque is a nêhiyaw beadwork artist and curator. She is a member of kisipatnahk (Louis Bull), one of the four nations collectively known as Maskwacis in Treaty 6 Territory. She grew up in her community, spending time in both Louis Bull where her father’s side of the family is from and the Samson Cree Nation, her maternal side. Adrienne holds a Master of Arts in Cultural Studies, Curatorial Practices from the University of Winnipeg and a Bachelor of Arts in Native Studies with Honours from the University of Alberta. Her work is grounded in nêhiyaw ways of knowing, combining traditional and contemporary practices in beadwork, textiles, and relationality. Adrienne is based in amiskwaciwâskahikan and spends as much time as she can with her nieces, nephews and her dog Willow.
Kiona Callihoo Ligtvoet, Project Coordinator
Kiona Callihoo Ligtvoet (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist practicing in amiskwaciwâskahikan on Treaty 6 Territory. She grew up West of the city near the hamlet of Calahoo where she lived with her relatives on a quarter section of land her moshom recieved after enfranchisement. Her family lines are Cree and Métis descending from Michel Band, as well as Dutch and mixed European. Kiona works in painting, printmaking, drawing and installation, recollecting personal stories of grief and tenderness. Her practice uses a non-linear telling of her memories through narrative work as a form of diaristic archiving. It draws from feelings of loss and enfranchisement, but also from deep belly laughter, mundane gestures, and a gentle fondness for where the histories between herself and her family overlap and disperse.
Working alongside other artists in initiatives of community care, Kiona co-organizes Making Space in partnership with Sanaa Humayun. She likes visiting her moshom on the farm, and gossiping with her mom, relatives, and friends on the prairies.
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Edmonton Arts Council and the City of Edmonton.
