Shelley Niro almost fallen
Opening on Saturday, April 14, 2007, 5 pm
In this exhibition, I present recent works including the video work Tree and the première of a new photographic installation entitled La Pietà.
Tree pays homage to the “Keep America Beautiful” campaign showing on television across the continent in the early 1970s. Iron Eyes Cody appeared as the stereotypical Indian as he looks around the environment and sees that the landscape is no longer being cared for and that there is little respect for it. He cries one big tear. Even though Iron Eyes isn’t Native and the campaign played on the “stoic representation,” I feel this is a representation we can look at as a role model. Caring for Mother Earth should be our biggest concern at the moment.
In Michelangelo’s Pietà, the mother holds her dead son. Even if I didn’t know some art history I could look at the sculpture and feel for the woman as she lovingly holds the man. It is here where I associate this image with the contemporary worldview of war from a woman’s perspective. I know Michelangelo’s Pietà is a religious notion but it is a universal one of grief. In my La Pietà, I’ve juxtaposed landscape with a young man’s chest. The landscape shows infinite beauty while the young man’s chest shows physical beauty. The two beauties become expendable resources. [S.N.]
Originally from Niagara Falls, New York, Shelley Niro lives in Brantford, Ontario. She holds an MFA from the University of Western Ontario (1997) and is internationally recognized for her work in photography and film.
Niro was awarded the prestigious Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Artists from the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis, Indiana, where she took part in the group exhibition After the Storm (2001). Her film Honey Moccasin (1998) won numerous awards across North America.
Niro has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions including: Twas The Night Before Chaos, YOUME Gallery, Hamilton, Ontario (2007), Red Skin Dreams with Sherwin Bitsui, Venice Biennale, Italy (2003), Divergences with Rebecca Belmore, MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina Saskatchewan. Recently, she presented Contemporary Voices with Jeff Thomas at Canada House in London. She also directed Suite: INDIAN in 2005, a series of 6 short films featuring artists, actors, musicians and dancers, most of them from the Six Nations Reserve.
QTVR
