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Gather Listen Hear: Resounding Mike MacDonald's 'Butterfly Garden'

T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss and Anne Riley, Sunset at Mount Trashmore Park, 2022

T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss and Anne Riley, Sunset at Mount Trashmore Park, 2022

Butterfly Garden by the late artist, Mike MacDonald (Mi’kmaw) is an artwork in Banff Centre’s permanent collection composed of plants intended to nourish the health of butterflies that has inspired collaborative works by T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss (Skwxwu7mesh, Sto:lo, Hawaiian, Swiss) and Anne Riley (Dene, Fort Nelson First Nation); and the curatorial research and work of Lisa Myers (Anishinaabe, Beausoleil First Nation). In this talk, they will each speak to the intersection of their practice with that of the late artist, as well as on the varied forms these works and exhibitions have taken: ranging from an interactive website documenting existing and replanted gardens by MacDonald alongside new gardens inspired by his work; to a sound work on cassette tape by Wyss and Riley titled Soundtrack for the Radical Love of Butterflies (2018); and on the travelling group exhibition, Powerful Glow (2022-2023) curated by Myers that included work by Wyss and Riley. The talk will be followed by a live sonification of plants within the Butterfly Garden by Wyss using a synthesizer. The recorded event will later be released by Banff Centre for online streaming. 

Walter Phillips Gallery would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Government of Canada, and Government of Alberta.

Biographies

T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss

T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss is an Indigenous Matriarch of the Skwxwu7mesh, Sto:lo and Hawaiian people. Through her work as an ethnobotanist, artist, activist and community-based educator, they strive to share Indigenous customs, teachings, and futures and to connect Indigenous peoples. Wyss’s thirty-year career encompasses a vast array of practices, from weaving, making remedies, medicine walks to the realm of Indigenous Digital Futurisms. Her interactive, community-based work is insightful and informative of their contemporary conditions.

Interweaving their skills as an ethnobotanist and an interdisciplinary artist, Wyss maintains a practice to decolonize their life and their art by learning about their culture and using traditions practiced by their ancestors.

This is witnessed in their recent exploration of cultural weaving using materials traditionally used by Salish People such as red and yellow cedar, Salish Woolly dog fibre, stinging nettles, and fireweed fluff. Furthermore, their current community teachings and research is focused on restoring and remediating Indigenous species and natural space by encouraging others to build their Indigenous food forests and to nurture local biodiversity respectfully and sustainably.

Wyss is a collaborator, deeply involved in community building and finds dialogue with communities crucial in exchanging knowledge and critical in preserving Indigenous understanding of the land and ecosystems. Wyss has taught these teachings to public institutions and organizations and has participated in creative projects that share different indigenous cultures in stewarding this effort in preservation. Outside the importance of preserving what surrounds them, she believes in the importance of taking care of and feeding oneself, in redefining oneself as a way to care for Mother Earth, Chescha7 Timixw, and Ch’iaxw- their sacred protocol.
 

Anne Riley

Anne Riley is a Indigiqueer multidisciplinary artist living as a Slavey Dene/German guest on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̍əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and Sel̓íl̓witulh Nations. She is a member of Fort Nelson First Nation. Her work explores different ways of being and becoming, touch and Indigeneity. Riley received her BFA from the University of Texas at Austin and has exhibited across the United States and Canada. From 2018-2020 she worked on a public art project commissioned by the City of Vancouver with her collaborator, T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss. Riley and Wyss’s project, A Constellation of Remediation, consisted of Indigenous remediation gardens planted throughout the city. Riley and Wyss were long listed for the 2021 Sobey Art Award. Since this project, Riley participated in the Drift: Art and Dark Matter residency and exhibition, creating works that consider the possibilities of making and being beyond the confines of western institutions and extractive processes. Currently, they are an MA Candidate in Cultural Studies at Queen's University. Their thesis research is focused on Indigiqueer Feminist Dene love. 

Lisa Myers

Lisa Myers is a curator and artist with a keen interest in interdisciplinary collaboration. Myers has a Master of Fine Arts in Criticism and Curatorial practice from OCAD University, Toronto. Through many media and materials, her practice examines place, histories, futures, and collective forms of knowledge exchange. Since 2010 she has worked with anthocyanin pigment from blueberries in printmaking and stop-motion animation. She has exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions in venues including Urban Shaman, Winnipeg; Art Gallery of Peterborough and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Curatorial projects include Carry Forward (2017), Beads, They're Sewn so Tight (2019), and Powerful Glow (2023). She is currently an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change (formerly Faculty of Environmental Studies) at York University. Myers is a member of Beausoleil First Nation and she is based in Port Severn and Toronto.