2023 Indigenous Artist in Residence
Larissa Kitchemonia, a local Anishnaabe-Saulteaux woman from The Key First Nation, has been selected as the City’s second Indigenous Artist in Residence.
During her residency, Larissa will explore the theme of ‘Urban Indigeneity’. Kitchemonia will host public engagement sessions that will focus 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 proposal involves an acrylic painting that will capture the likeness of the participants attending 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.
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 neighborhood 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 neighborhood. 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. |
