she makes all things good
Maria-Margaretta
Curated by Abedar Kamgari
Billboard Exchange co-presented in Saskatoon, SK by AKA Artist-Run, Hamilton Artists Inc., and PAVED Arts
July 1 to August 31, 2023

How do we care for objects and the stories they hold? Artist Maria-Margaretta explores generational relations by considering the ways in which objects are created, kept, and passed down. Her photographic billboard, she makes all things good, reflects on her homelands and ancestral lineage through the transformative power of objects.

The image consists of three objects: an axe centerpiece held by a hand wearing beaded white gloves, placed against a canvas tent. Margaretta collaborated with Joshua Mangeshig Pawis-Steckley to create a sheath for the axe, adorning the object with delicate beadwork as a gift for their young daughter. The axe is a well-used family tool recovered on Pawis-Steckley’s nan’s beach on Wasauksing First Nation. Design elements on the sheath reference and honour their Métis and Anishinaabe heritage and shared journey as parents. Meanwhile, the elbow-length white gloves, beaded by Margaretta for her great great grandmother, embody the Michif matriarchs whose labour in raising families upholds Métis nationhood. The worn, olive-coloured tent belonging to Margaretta’s grandfather sets a warm and earthy tone to the image, reminiscent of her homelands in St. Louis, Saskatchewan. Together, the axe, glove, and tent carry the past into the present, envisioning new worlds for holding and dreaming with their daughter. 

This installation is part of a national billboard exchange between Hamilton Artists Inc., AKA Artist-run and PAVED Arts in Saskatoon. The three-way collaboration also includes a billboard project by Cheyenne Rain LaGrande ᑭᒥᐘᐣ at Hamilton Artists Inc from August 2023 to June 2024.

Maria-Margaretta is an interdisciplinary Red River Michif artist from Treaty Six Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She has ancestral ties to the Métis communities of St-François-Xavier, St. Boniface, Manitoba and St. Louis, Saskatchewan. She is currently making and living on the stolen territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaʔ, and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm Nations. Maria-Margaretta holds a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art+Design and an MFA from OCAD University. Her practice is an exploration of the Michif self archive, autobiographical beadwork and objects of the everyday. Using Métis identity as a place of transformation she questions how memory, personal experience, motherhood, and ancestral relations influence her understanding of self.

Joshua Mangeshig Pawis-Steckley is a multi-disciplinary Anishinaabe artist from Barrie, Ontario and a member of Wasauksing First Nation. He currently resides in the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsliel-Waututh people. He is an award winning Children’s book illustrator and author whose work explores themes of language revitalization, ancestral knowledge sharing, and memory. 

Abedar Kamgari (b. Tehran) is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, and arts worker currently based in Hamilton and Toronto. Her research is rooted in diasporic experiences, complicated inheritances, and body memory. www.abedarkamgari.com

Design elements by Joshua Mangeshig Pawis-Steckley

Hamilton Artist Inc.(The Inc.) is a not-for-profit, artist-run centre that empowers artists of all career levels to take risks with their contemporary visual arts practices and present their work in a critical context.

PAVED Arts is a non-profit, artist run centre for production, presentation, research and dissemination of contemporary media arts. The word PAVED is an acronym signifying the integration of media art forms addressed by our mandate: photographic, audio, video, electronic, digital. PAVED Arts exists to support artists who work in these media.