2024 Indigenous Artist in Residence
The City of Regina is pleased to announce that Bee Bird, a rising multidisciplinary artist from the Montreal Lake Cree Nation, has been selected as the City’s 2024 Indigenous Artist in Residence.
During his residency, Bee Bird will explore the theme of “Urban Indigeneity”. He will host public engagement sessions focusing on collaborative community projects and a series of artist talks to highlight Indigenous artists living and working in Regina. His work will include poetry videos that draw from his experiences as a journalist, multimedia artist and his cultural heritage.
The City issued an open call for the Indigenous Artist in Residence in April 2024. An expert panel of Indigenous art professionals reviewed several applications from local artists who submitted proposals.
The residency supports an Indigenous artist (First Nations, Métis, or Inuit) in a part-time capacity, providing them with studio space within City of Regina facilities to explore their art practice, facilitate community engagement, and create works of art for the City's Civic Art Collection. The Indigenous Artist in Residence Program celebrates and amplifies Indigenous voices, enhancing the artistic and cultural presence in our community.
2023 Indigenous Artist in Residence
Larissa Kitchemonia is a local Anishnaabe-Saulteaux woman from The Key First Nation and the City of Regina’s second Indigenous Artist in Residence.
During her residency, Larissa explored the theme of ‘Urban Indigeneity’. Kitchemonia hosted public engagement sessions that focused on a collaborative community project of ribbon skirt, shirt sewing and medicine pouch making along with a series of artist talks to highlight Indigenous artists that live and work in Regina. Her artwork is an acrylic painting that captures the likeness of the participants who attended her sessions.
Kitchemonia’s painting, bead work and customary art practice is informed by themes of nature, womanhood and motherhood embedded with traditional, First Nation ideology and practices.
Kitchemonia has completed a bachelor’s degree in Indigenous Fine Arts from the First Nations University of Canada, and she is a Master of Interdisciplinary Fine Arts candidate at the University of Regina. Her overall approach to art is to acknowledge her culture and create art as a way of evoking storytelling and learning.
Video Transcript
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Audio |
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*gentle music* |
Title appears on screen that reads 2023 City of Regina Indigenous Artist in Residence. |
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[Larissa] “My name is Larissa Kitchemonia. I am a Anishinaabe Saulteaux from the Key First Nation." |
Close up of Larissa painting on a canvas. Wide frame of Larissa talking to the camera. |
| "It's just a little reserve outside of Norquay Saskatchewan. So I've been in Regina for about 10 years. I came here to go to school and I've been living here and working here and raising my family here since then.” |
Close up of Larissa's hands holding a paintbrush and palette. Wide frame of Larissa painting on a canvas. Wide frame of Larissa talking to the camera. |
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“My art practice is predominantly painting. I've always been a painter. I've been doing it since I was about 15 years old.” |
Close up of Larissa painting on a canvas. Close up of Larissa's face as she is painting. |
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“I think for me it was important to have the idea of my perspective of how I view the world. So as an Indigenous woman, I wanted that to be embedded in my art because of like residential schools and all of that. Like my grandmother went to one.” |
Wide frame of Larissa talking to the camera. Close up of Larissa's artwork, including a painted plate and canvas. |
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“There was like a disconnect with our culture. So I think we're always kind of just like exploring this idea of identity and I'm always trying to like look for what our like language is.” |
Close up Larissa's beaded artwork. Close up of Larissa painting on a canvas. Close up of Larissa's hands holding a paintbrush and palette. |
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“I realize that we as Saulteaux people from like my own community and like the surrounding communities, we've somehow lost our visual language. It was really like hard to face, but at the same time it like encouraged me to keep exploring like maybe like what I know can somehow help revitalize or like bring back some things that are are Saulteaux. So that was kind of my ideas.” |
Wide frame of Larissa talking to the camera. Close up of Larissa painting on a canvas. |
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“Urban Indigeneity to me is just about identity, right? Like I think a lot of the times when you come to the city it's easy to forget about who you are as a person and you get caught up in the culture that is like an urban culture and I think there's like a really strong length to identity and personal wellness.” |
Wide frame of Larissa and two other people in a room, working with thread and needles. Wide frame of Larissa looking over someone's shoulder who is using a sewing machine. Close up of a person using the sewing machine to sew ribbon together. |
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“To have that interaction with other people is so important and especially like I think Indigenous people like to come into an urban setting |
Close up of Larissa and another person laying out pieces of ribbon. Close up of two people in frame listening to someone speak. Close up of Larissa nodding her head as she listens to someone speak. Wide frame of Larissa talking to the camera. Close up of Larissa and another person laughing as they use the sewing machine. Close up of Larissa laughing with a different person. |
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“I invited people from the community |
Close up of Larissa talking to camera. Close up of Larissa creating a medicine pouch. Wide frame of Larissa and two other people sewing a ribbon skirt or ribbon shirt. |
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“I was really just trying to bring people together |
Close up of a person using a sewing machine. Close up of Larissa's hands holding a palette and paintbrush. Close up of Larissa painting on a canvas. |
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“Something really awesome happens |
Close up of a person laying out a ribbon. Close up of Larissa helping a person sew ribbon together. Close up of Larissa talking to camera. Close up of Larissa painting on canvas. |
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“We live in a situation where we're not always represented to the fullest extent. And I think opportunities like this really give Indigenous artists an opportunity to be acknowledged and to understand that like, oh, I do have a space and I do have a place within this community.” |
Close up of Larissa painting on canvas. Close up of Larissa's palette. Wide frame of Larissa and three other women in a room having a discussion. Close up of Larissa's face. |
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(gentle music) |
Text appears across the screen: "Through the support of the City of Regina, Larissa Kitchemonia hosted artist talks with local Indigenous artists and public engagement workshops for the community. She then created a painting using the likeness of the participants. For more information on the Indigenous Artist in Residence Program: Regina.ca/artist." |
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*City of Regina outro sound* |
The Regina logo appears in the middle of the screen. |
2022 Indigenous Artist in Residence
Audie Murray, a local Michif visual artist based in Oskana kâ-asastêki (Regina, Saskatchewan; Treaty 4 territory), was selected as the City’s first ever Indigenous Artist in Residence.
During her residency, Audie explored the theme of ‘Urban Indigeneity’. Her artwork proposal involved a large-scale beaded wall hanging done through the process of by hand bead weaving. Murray also supported local youth through a youth residency where they learned beadwork and worked alongside local cultural leaders.
Murray’s art practice is informed by themes of contemporary culture, embodied experiences and lived dualities. These modes of working assist with the recentering of our collective connection to the body, ancestral knowledge systems, space and time.
Murray holds a visual arts diploma from Camosun College, a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Regina, and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Calgary. She has exhibited widely, including at the Independent Art Fair, NYC; The Vancouver Art Gallery; Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow; and the Anchorage Museum. Murray is represented by Fazakas Gallery, located on Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaʔ, and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm territory (Vancouver, B.C.).
Video Transcript
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Audio |
Visual |
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*gentle music* |
Title appears on screen that reads 2022 Indigenous Artist in Residence. |
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[Audie] “My passion and my drive really comes from this need to communicate through the creation of material things”. |
Wide frame of tree tops and the sky. Close-up of Audie walking on the sidewalk. Wide frame of Audie walking in an alley. Close up of Audie’s hands working with a string and beads. |
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“It really rounds me out as a person and makes me feel whole”. |
Close up of the string and beads on a table. Close up of Audie looking down on her beadwork. |
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“I'm Audie Murray and I work primarily as a visual artist. I live on Treaty 4 territory in Regina, Saskatchewan”. |
Wide frame of Audie sitting in a chair with her artwork. Audie Murray Indigenous Artist in Residence appears on the bottom of the scre.en |
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“By working with beadwork, in a way I feel like I'm really connecting to ancestral ways of working, but I'm also really connecting to future generations”. |
Close up of 3 bead jars appear on screen. Close up of hands beadworking on a table .Audie in frame beadworking. Wide frame of hands beadworking on a table. Audie sitting in a chair with her artwork. |
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“So the youth and I have been meeting every second week for the last couple of months”. |
Close up of Audie walking towards a building. Wide frame of Audie and students sit on the floor in a room, working with beads. |
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“We meet at the Mamaweyatitan Centre”. |
Close up to Audie and students sitting on the floor in a room, working with beads. |
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“The mentorship aspect of this youth residency is that I am showing them how to do the same stitch that I'm working on for my piece with the city residency, and they're making their own artworks that will then be exhibited”. |
Close up of student’s hand beadworking. Close up of Audie and student in frame beadworking. Close up of hands working with beads. Close up of a beadwork guide. Close up of hands working with beads. Wide frame of a beadwork guide. |
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“I've always lived very urban and because I'm metis I don't have a reservation community to visit”. |
Wide frame of Audie sitting in a chair with her artwork. Wide frame of Audie walking in an alley. Close up of Audie walking on the sidewalk. |
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“Our city is still very much traditional territories and indigenous land, and so I think the concept of urban indigeneity is so fruitful to talk about and that's something I've definitely worked through with previous art pieces”. |
Wide frame of Audie sitting in a chair with her artwork. Wide frame of a neighbourhood. Wide frame of the neighbourhood street. Close up of a student beadworking with Audie and other students out of frame in the background. Close up of a beads on a string on top of a beadwork guide. |
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“This piece I'm working on right now is beaded wall hanging that is made with size 10 seed beads”. |
Wide frame of Audie at her desk with her beads. Close up of Audie’s hand beadworking. |
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“How I got the image that I'm working from is I took a picture of the sky in the city from my backyard in Regina at the exact same time as my auntie took a picture of the sky in Lebret, which is a smaller community that is outside of, like, city limits”. |
Wide frame of Audie sitting in a chair with her artwork. Wide frame of neighbourhood. Wide frame of tree tops and the sky. |
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“This merging of two skies into one image really highlights the fact that the sky is not different within those two spaces, and I think that really speaks to the layers of urban indigeneity in a very subtle way”. |
Close up of Audie sitting in a chair with her artwork. Wide frame of Audie and her cat at her desk with her beads. Close up of hands working with beads. Close up of rocks, a shell and beadwork needles on a shelf. Close up of Audie’s beadwork. |
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“You can see my work right now in Radical Stitch which is a touring exhibition about beadwork, curated by Cathy Mattes, Michelle Lavallee, and Sherry Farrell Racette”. |
Wide frame of hands working with beads on a table. Close up Audie sitting on the floor. Wide frame of Audie sitting in a chair with her artwork. |
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(gentle music) |
Close up to Audie and students sitting on the floor in a room, working with beads. Text appears across the screen with a link to Visit Regina.ca/artist For open Calls to Artist. |
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*City of Regina outro sound* |
The Regina logo appears in the middle of the screen. |
