Sharon Hunter – Artist Talk

Join artist Sharon Hunter on ZOOM as she discusses her work Kwewog Giiwednog — Women of the North a large mural currently on exhibition outside the Thunder Bay Art Gallery.

Sharon will be in conversation with Dana Boyer, who is pictured in the mural with her two daughters, Brenna and Brooke. Sharon and Dana will share in conversation about the making of the mural, its history as a billboard on HWY 17, and the honouring of relationships, land and water.

 

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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 is a large mural 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.