
leslie mccue: bagiskaagewin
Elwood Jimmy
A member of the Mississaugas of Curve Lake First Nation, leslie mccue interweaves personal and cultural memory, highlighting storytelling as a powerful source of strength and healing. Sparked by her own loss and grief, bagiskaagewin (letting go) features sound, projection, as well as vessels created within Anishinaabeg community workshops – forms that emerge from her years of traveling back and forth to a family cottage on an island with her late grandfather. All are encouraged to write a message that they have been holding on to related to death, dying and mourning, tying it to one of the boats using a red fabric tie, a material often used to offer gifts of tobacco and prayers. Effectively creating a river of grief and gratitude, these are symbolic offerings – a collective gesture acknowledging loss and life in ways that shift Western sensibilities shaping how death is understood and encountered. Making the journey to the island this upcoming year for the first time since her grandfather’s passing, for mccue this is a process that also takes place through place itself.
Image detail: leslie mccue, Lovesick Lake, 2020, digital video, 29:19 mins. Photos from the McCue Family. Music by Stu McCue & Wild Wind



bagiskaagewin is presented by the Art Gallery of Guelph in partnership with Musagetes and with the support of the Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts.
Gallery
About the artist
leslie mccue
Based in Toronto, leslie mccue is an interdisciplinary artist and arts administrator, performer and educator who works with the Chocolate Woman Collective, Royal Ontario Museum Youth Cabinet, and Young People’s Theatre. Past performances and presentations include the Vancouver Winter Olympics, Museum of Civilization, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Juno Beach Museum.
View More Exhibitions

exhibition
May 22.2025 / August 29.2025
Call for Artists: Art Gallery of Guelph’s 2025 Summer Exhibition

exhibition
May 3.2025 / May 8.2025

exhibition
April 24.2025 / April 29.2025
Through photography, Bahar Enshaeian unravels the intricate layers of memory, identity, and belonging. Rooted in personal experience, her work speaks to the complexities of migration, displacement, and the search for home.

exhibition
April 10.2025 / April 15.2025
What utility can we find in vestiges of the past? This question shapes Hal Fortin’s interdisciplinary practice and its distinct sculptural language, punctuated by humour, dream logic, and the rhythms of domestic labour.

exhibition
April 2.2025 / April 6.2025
At the heart of Stephanie Fortin’s practice is an ethical inquiry: is it necessary—or responsible—to aestheticize waste in the context of global exploitation and climate change?

exhibition
Contemporary Indigenous Artists at AGG
January 16.2025 / May 4.2025

exhibition
September 12.2024 / January 5.2025
Eternal Transcendent highlights a selection of photographic works by Robert Flack that convey his reverence for the more-than-corporeal and a yearning for healing in light of the AIDS epidemic.

exhibition
September 12.2024 / May 4.2025
Juxtaposing Susan Mogul’s 1997 video with a collection of quillboxes, this exhibition unifies both forms of expression through themes of women’s identity, family, relationships, and the quest for home.