1080 Keewatin St,
Thunder Bay, ON, P7B 6T7

Kwewog Giiwednog — Women of the North

This summer, experience art outside the Thunder Bay Art Gallery with a large mural by artist Sharon Hunter.

Kwewog Giiwednog — Women of the North is a large mural that depicts three female figures dressed in regalia who are mother, Dana Boyer, and daughters Brenna and Brooke Chiblow Boyer of the Mississauga First Nation. Artist Sharon Hunter has known these women for a long time and paints them standing along the Mississagi River at their pow wow grounds, looking across the horizon. This work speaks to the women’s prayers and respect to the water. Bright ribbons and red bear berries connect Dana to her clan and home territory. The fish in the river represent her daughters, who belong to the pike clan. The women physically and spiritually inhabit this place and its past, present and future. From August 2019 to April 2021 the mural was situated as a highway billboard on HWY 17.

 

Dana Boyer and her daughters standing along the Mississagi River on the powwow grounds of the Mississagi First Nation.

From Left – Dana Boyer and daughters Brenna and Brooke Chiblow Boyer of the Mississauga First Nation

 

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Sharon Hunter is an artist of settler and Ojibwe heritage. Originally from Toronto, she has lived in Northern Ontario for nine years. The many places she has called home, including Attawapiskat First Nation and the small town of Bruce Mines, ON inform her art practice in film, theatre and community arts, and education. Many of her canvases connect to architectural interiors and exteriors of homes and ideas of belonging and erasure. Her large billboards are landscape paintings which reflect on her heritage and relationship to the Algoma region, with an awareness of Lake Superior, farmland, and the main travelling route of HWY 17.

 

Kwewog Giiwednog—Women of the North Spray paint an exterior acrylic paint on aluminum sheeting 16x8 ft  2019

Kwewog Giiwednog—Women of the North by Sharon Hunter
Spray paint an exterior acrylic paint on aluminum sheeting, 16×8 ft, 2019