Nadia Myre – until May 27, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

WOMAN. ARTIST. INDIGENOUS.
NADIA MYRE. TOUT CE QUI RESTE – SCATTERED REMAINS

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) is presenting the first survey exhibition of the Quebec Indigenous artist NADIA MYRE: TOUT CE QUI RESTE – SCATTERED REMAINS. It features the Canadian premiere of Code Switching, a series Myre produced during an artist residency at the Darling Foundry, sponsored by the MMFA, in 2016-2017. The exhibition includes some twenty works – photographs and sculptures – created between 2000 and 2017. It is part of Woman. Artist. Indigenous., a season at the Museum, devoted to female Indigenous artists.

Nadia Myre is a member of the Algonquin First Nation of Kitigan Zibi Anishnabeg. In her works, she revisits official history and the political and social struggles of Indigenous peoples. She judiciously juxtaposes her personal experience with that of others, creating highly symbolic works that spark contemplation and reflection. She takes a participatory approach and tackles topics of identity, language, desire and memory. The works in the exhibition attest to the encounter between Indigenous peoples and Europeans.
Nathalie Bondil, Director General and Chief Curator of the MMFA, is “touched to welcome this first solo exhibition by Nadia Myre in a museum. She is an artist I have known and appreciated for years. Her heightened sensitivity coupled with her conceptual articulation and aesthetic sensibilities place her among the best female artists of her generation.”

“This exhibition is an outstanding opportunity to discover or rediscover the work of a unique artist who has reinvented herself in remarkable ways over the years. Her intuitive use of symbolic reversals, transposing the way objects are used to uncover new meaning, is part of her poetic strategies to share her story and to revisit history,” added Geneviève Goyer-Ouimette, Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Curator of Quebec and Canadian Contemporary Art of the MMFA.

Nadia Myre (born in 1974),
Circle from the series Code Switching, 2017, digital print, edition of 5. Courtesy of CARCC and Art Mûr.

Code Switching (2017): A new work of art produced during an MMFA-sponsored residency
Code Switching features fragments of the first commercially produced European pipes from the dawn of the industrial age, which were used as currency with First Nations peoples. This series of large-scale photographs presents works created with these pipe fragments using Indigenous beadwork techniques. By re-appropriating historical traditions and tales, Myre seeks to spark reflection and build bridges between
cultures.

For more information, including opening hours and ticket prices, visit: www.mbam.qc.ca or 514-285-2000