Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch

September 27, 2024–February 17, 2025

Shelley Niro, The Rebel, 1987/2022, hand tinted gelatin silver print, Courtesy of the Artist

Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch is the first major retrospective of work by the multimedia artist Shelley Niro, who grew up on the Six Nations Reserve, near Brantford, Ontario.

Spanning four decades of her photography, film, painting, installation, sculpture and mixed media practice, the exhibition highlights themes she constantly returns to: Matriarchy, Past is Present, Actors and Family Relations. Her persistent vision is to represent Indigenous women and girls, advocating for self-representation and sovereignty. Her highly empathetic approach moves viewers to understand the issues at hand through her visually impactful and politically powerful manner. She uses parody, feminism and spirituality to examine identity and, in turn, brings political power to the realm of the personal.

Featuring over 70 works, each provides vantage points from which Niro probes ideas central to her experience and identity as a Mohawk woman, such as the story of Sky Woman, the gender roles and stereotypes imposed on her culture by patriarchal settler culture, and the persistence of Haudenosaunee matrilineal culture.

Accessible, humorous and peppered with references to popular culture, Niro’s art delves into the timeless cultural knowledge and generational histories of her Six Nations Kanyen’kehá:ka community to provide purpose and healing.

This multi-year exhibition tour will include five venues. Exhibition tour dates:

May 27–December 31, 2023
Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, New York, NY, USA

February 10–May 26, 2024
Art Gallery of Hamilton, Hamilton ON

June 21–August 25, 2024
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON

September 27, 2024–February 17, 2025
Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC

April 4–August 31, 2025
Remai Modern, Saskatoon, SK

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Organized and circulated by the Art Gallery of Hamilton with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and with curatorial support from the National Gallery of Canada. Curated by Melissa Bennett, AGH Senior Curator of Contemporary Art; Greg Hill, Independent Curator, formerly Audain Senior Curator, Indigenous Art, National Gallery of Canada; and David Penney, formerly Associate Director of Museum scholarship, Exhibitions, and Public Engagement at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. The Vancouver Art Gallery presentation is coordinated by Richard Hill, Smith Jarislowsky Senior Curator of Canadian Art.