Art Metropole

Adrian Stimson is a member of the Siksika (Blackfoot) Nation in southern Alberta. Across installation, painting, photography, video, performance and public art, Stimson’s works re-signify colonial history using both humour and counter-memory. Stimson has exhibited widely across Canada and internationally. He has a BFA with distinction from the Alberta College of Art and Design and an MFA from the University of Saskatchewan. Stimson participated in the Canadian Forces Artist Program, which sent him to Afghanistan. Stimson received a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2018 and a REVEAL Indigenous Arts Award from the Hnatyshyn Foundation in 2017. He was also awarded the Blackfoot Visual Arts Award in 2009, the Alberta Centennial Medal in 2005 and the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal in 2003. His work is held in public and private collections including The British Museum, London; Campbelltown Arts Centre; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina and Remai Modern, Saskatoon, among others.

Tess Allas (Wiradjuri) is an award-winning curator specializing in contemporary Indigenous art. Her independently curated exhibitions and her own works as an artist have been shown in Australia, Finland, Canada and the United States. She has published broadly for many art institutions across Australia as well as for leading Australian art journals. She has authored over 400 biographies of Australian Indigenous artists for the Design and Art Australia Online website. More recently she has had chapters published in Mapping Deathscapes: Digital Geographies of Racial and Border Violence (Routledge, 2022) and Curating Lively Objects (Routledge, 2021).

Joseph Pugliese is a professor in the Department of Media, Music, Communication and Cultural Studies, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. His key research areas include Social Justice, understood in the most expansive sense so that it includes the more-than-human world, is the superordinate term that encompasses the entirety of his research. Key fields of research include colonialism and decoloniality; state violence, war and carcerality; more-than-human ecologies; race, whiteness and ethnicity; law, culture and the humanities; visual culture; and migration and diaspora.

Dr. Ernie Walker is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Saskatchewan. His interests include North American prehistory with an emphasis on the Great Plains and American Southwest regions, vertebrate paleontology with an emphasis on Late Pleistocene fauna, and the environmental history of western North America. Dr. Walker is a founder of Wanuskewin Heritage Park. For over 40 years, he has worked in a variety of roles at the park to support efforts ranging from its early establishment to its efforts to achieve UNESCO World Heritage Designation. Professor Walker is the Chief Archaeologist at Wanuskewin and a longstanding member of its board of directors. Dr. Walker is also well known for his work in forensic identification for law enforcement agencies across Canada. He received the Saskatchewan Order of Merit in 2001 and the Order of Canada in 2003 for service to law enforcement and the First Nations communities.

Erin Sutherland works as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Calgary in Mohkinstsis (Calgary), Treaty 7. Raised in Northern Alberta, Sutherland moved to Kataraqui (Kingston) to complete her MA and then PhD in cultural studies at Queen’s University in 2017. She is a core and founding member of Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective in amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton), and the collective recently opened its own gallery on Jasper Avenue. She also works as an independent curator. Recent performances and exhibitions include Generous Acts (2021) at Ociciwan Contemporary Art Centre (co-curated with Alberta W.), Shaman Exterminator: Hubris (2020) with Adrian Stimson at the University of Alberta Augustana Campus and Her Body will Remember (2018) at the Kelowna Art Gallery. She is of settler and Métis descent and is a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta.