Chalef changeant | Wolf Willow: Robyn Adams

Chalef changeant | Wolf Willow: Robyn Adams | Curated by Tiffany Shaw

February 20 - March 15, 2024

First Gallery @ FAB

Please note that FAB Gallery will be closed Saturday, Feb. 24, for Reading Week. We will return to our regular hours on Tuesday, Feb. 27.

Reception

University of Alberta faculty, staff, students and invited guests
Both the Artist and Curator will be present
Friday, March 1, 2024 | 7-9 pm | FAB Gallery

About the Show

Chalef changeant | Wolf Willow is a solo exhibition by Red River Métis artist and designer, Robyn Adams, featuring photography, cyanotype, and recently published poetry. Adams’ artwork and research is rooted in family-centered, land-based knowledge around Métis history.

This exhibition invites viewers into the living history of her family and the Métis people through the storied landscape of vernacular Métis architecture. Her photographs of Red River Framed Métis homes share connections of settlement and displacement from southern Manitoba to Northern Alberta. Adams’ ancestors worked along the Red River Cart trails across Canada and south of the border, transporting logs, and building farmsteads along the waterways and in between. Her poetry flutters between past and present memory of her family’s intergenerational narratives, highlighting stories of how Métis relate to the land and community. The artwork Chalef changeant was made within this context, during a research trip to Métis Crossing, with the artist’s mother Myrna Adams along with Tiffany Shaw, and Vivian Manasc. Through laughter and conversations, native plants along the North Saskatchewan River were collectively placed and weaved with the daylighting of the sun into the fabric of the artwork.

This exhibition is the second presentation in a series of exhibition projects taking place at FAB gallery throughout winter and spring of 2024. These exhibitions have been funded through an Activation Project Grant from The Alberta Foundation for the Arts and aim to prioritize and elevate the vision and artistic voices of Indigenous and Black curators, artists, and designers.

About the Artist

Michif Biography: Robyn Adams si t’in sitwayayn Michif di la Rivyayr Roj. Sa famiyl Michif y vyin di la Rochelle ipi St Pierre-Jolys, Manitoba. Akchewelmen ayn dowb Mitres di Arkitekchur ipi in Arkitekchur di paysaj a l’University di British Columbia, Y li in inviti sur li teritwayr non sidi di li xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Sel̓íl̓witulh. Si t’in archis multidisiplinayr ki aym payshi, ki ramans di medikamen, beading, ipi fayr tot sort d’afayr avek si min. Robyn son ovraj s’inskri en synkronism dan l’ethos di la kaliti di vi d’Audre Lorde son “kaliti di vi”, ivo ki interof li rapor a la tayr ipi a d’lo a travayr li weaving di knowledge otokton, di l’art ipi di l’arkitekchur di seremoni. Robyn y sharsh a kryi in arkitekchur di jway powetchik, o koti di matryark ki l’on kontribuwi a kryi in senchimen d’apartenan powr li komunoti otokton a travayr li ten sonb afin kon ni kapab trasi di shmin l’bor d’in miyewr futchur.

Robyn Adams is a Red River Métis citizen of the Manitoba Métis Federation. Her Métis family is from la Rochelle and St. Pierre-Jolys, Manitoba. Currently a dual Master of Architecture and Landscape Architecture student at the University of British Columbia, living as a guest on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Sel̓íl̓witulh. She is a multidisciplinary artist working between Vancouver and her home territory in Winnipeg. Robyn enjoys fishing, medicine picking, beadwork, and making things with her hands. Robyn’s work synchronously exists in the ethos of Audre Lorde’s ‘quality of light,’ in which she interrogates relationships with the land and water through the intricate weaving of Indigenous histories, knowledge, ceremony, art and architecture. Robyn seeks to create architecture of poetic joy, alongside the matriarchs that have helped steward a sense of home for Indigenous communities through the dark times so that we may be able to forge paths into brighter futures.

About the Curator

Tiffany Shaw is a Métis architect, artist and curator based in Alberta. She holds a BFA from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) University, a Masters in Architecture from the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and is currently working at Reimagine Architects and recently started an Indigenous owned consulting company, named Reimagine Gathering. Shaw has exhibited widely including the Architecture Venice Biennale, Winnipeg Art Gallery, Pier 21, Agnes Etherington Art Centre and the Chicago Architecture Biennial. She has been the recipient of multiple public art commissions such as Edmonton's Indigenous Art Park and Winnipeg’s Markham Bus Station. Among her public art projects Tiffany has produced several notable transitory art works and is a core member of Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective.

Oscillating between digital and analogue methodologies Shaw’s work gathers notions of craft, memory and atmosphere. Her practice is often guided by communal interventions as a way to engage a lifted understanding of place. While born in Calgary and raised in Edmonton, Shaw’s Métis lineage derives from Fort McMurray via Fort McKay and the Red River.

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