Storied Land: (Re)Mapping Winnipeg 2022

Storied Land: (Re)Mapping Winnipeg is an artist's book exploring segments of the colonial and racial history of settlement in Manitoba and Winnipeg through the use of layered etchings that recall the diverging narratives of experiences. These histories have been sourced from local newspaper archives and from various accounts of Indigenous people, Métis people, and Mennonite settlers. This collection of prints and texts emerged from an invitation from the Winnipeg Art Gallery to create a series of prints for the exhibition Headlines: The Art of the News Cycle in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Winnipeg Free Press. This project gave me the opportunity to learn more about the colonial history of Winnipeg. It also allowed me to further explore the colonial history of my own roots and challenge the settler narratives I grew up with. My maternal great great great grandparents were among the early Mennonite settlers that migrated to Manitoba between 1874-1877.

To access and read a digital version of this book click here: Storied Land Digital Book.

You can view my artist talk from January 13, 2023 at the Winnipeg Art Gallery - Qaumajuk online here: Storied Land Artist Talk.

Layered Histories: Perspectives on Colonization from the Chaco 2021

Layered Histories: Perspectives on Colonization from the Chaco is an artist's book that explores the complexities of colonization of the Paraguayan Chaco region through layered etchings and diverging narratives of experiences and history from the perspectives of the Enxet and Enlhet Indigenous people, Anglican missionaries and Mennonite settlers. This collection of prints and texts has emerged from an invitation for an artist residency from the SDCELAR (Santo Domingo Centre for Excellence in Latin American Research) at the British Museum. I was invited to engage with and create an artistic response to the Paraguay collection that is housed in storage at the British Museum in London. The collection consists of Indigenous artefacts collected by Anglican missionaries in the early 1900s. This project gave me the opportunity to research the early colonization history of the Lower Chaco from the Anglican perspective, and to further explore the colonial history of my own roots – the settlement of Mennonites in the Central Chaco beginning in 1927, which resulted in the displacement of the Enlhet Norte.

The prints and text excerpts trace the events of early contacts between European missionary explorers, settlers and Indigenous people through the changes in landscape and ways of living to today's attempts at Indigenous assertion of their rights and tentative perspectives for the future. We often think of colonization as a process of history in the past. However, the impacts of colonization continue to pervade everything in our lives today: social structures and systems, our perception of land and property, the way we think about, interact with, and treat others on whose land we now live, whose artefacts we store, and whose experiences are not taught in schools. This artist's book invites to question our biases, our perceptions, and our understanding of history, and challenges us to decolonize our thinking.

To purchase a published version of this book in English and Spanish click here: Storied Land Digital Book.

To access and read a digital version of this book in English click here: Layered Histories: Perspectives on Colonization from the Chaco.

To access and read a digital version of this book in Spanish click here: Historias superpuestas: perspectivas sobre la colonizaci´on desde el Chaco.

You can view my artist talk from March 2022 here: Layered Histories Artist Talk.

You can view my artist talk with Spanish subtitles from March 2022 here: Layered Histories Spanish Subtitles Artist Talk.