Shelley Niro: ONGNIAAHRA/Niagara
At Boarding House Gallery
Tuesday – Friday, 12-5 pm
Shelley Niro’s exhibition at the Boarding House Gallery marks the beginning of the artist’s creative residency with the Art Gallery of Guelph and Musagetes Foundation in 2018. Emerging from Niro’s engagement with the AGG’s extensive collection of historic Haudenosaunee beadwork donated by William Reid, the installation features Niro’s 2015 video Niagara in dialogue with selections from the collection that are associated with Niagara Falls, a landscape that enticed some of the earliest European and American tourists with entertainment spectacles and souvenirs.
These finely crafted and detailed artworks were produced by women primarily for the souvenir trade. Many of these items were sold at Niagara Falls in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the beginning of a period when Indigenous cultural practices were banned in Canada under The Indian Act and systematically suppressed through the residential school system. Producing and selling souvenir beadwork was a means to support family and community while maintaining craft traditions. “These works,” according to Niro, “are about poverty.”
About the artist
Shelley Niro
Shelley Niro is a Brantford-based multi-disciplinary artist whose work focuses on Indigenous identity, history and rights imbued with a deeply feminist perspective and rich humour. Niro is a member of the Six Nations Reserve, Turtle Clan, Bay of Quinte Mohawk. Her work encompasses filmmaking, photography, painting, sculpture, beadwork, and new media. Shelley Niro: ONGNIAAHRA/Niagara is presented in conjunction with 150 Acts: Art, Activism, Impact.
View More Exhibitions
exhibition
Contemporary Indigenous Artists at AGG
January 16.2025 / May 4.2025
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.
exhibition
September 12.2024 / January 5.2025
Some kind of we brings together works that approach t4t sensibilities, emphasizing trans relationality, self-representation, cross-generational inheritance, desire, and love.
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 5.2024 / May 4.2025
In Entrelazados, Guatemalan-Mexican-American artist Justin Favela continues his exploration of notions of identity, place, and authenticity through his distinct remixes of popular culture and Latinx experience.
exhibition
Paul Nadeau
July 18.2024 / August 25.2024
Paul Nadeau’s paintings explore Canadian eco-tourism and resource extraction that contributes to the settler-colonial view of Canadian wilderness.
exhibition
Richard Bedwash
June 13.2024 / August 25.2024
Explore the vivid, symbol-rich images of Anishinaabe artist Richard Bedwash that connects his work, his life, and the cultural landscapes of Guelph.
exhibition
May 30.2024 / July 10.2024
The work of Catherine Chan delves into human entanglements with the more-than-human using rocks and other materials of geology to explore the intersection of deep time with more fleeting experiences.
