The Vancouver Art Gallery in Canada is currently presenting Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch, a large retrospective of work by Shelley Niro, an American artist from New York and Ontario, who belongs to the Turtle Clan of the Mohawks from the Bay of Quinte. The Turtle Clan originates from the vicinity of Ontario; they are an Indigenous Iroquoian-speaking North American group spread across Southern Canada and Northeastern New York in the United States.

The Vancouver show is on from September 27, 2024 - February 17, 2025, and brings together the full breadth of the artist’s paintings, photography, sculptures, mixed media art and film works. 500 Year Itch is organised by the Art Gallery of Hamilton (AGH), Canada with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC along with curatorial support from the National Gallery of Canada. Niro joins STIR for an interview that explores her articulation of Mohawk gender dynamics and her series This Land is Mime Land (1992), which intersperses photographs of the artist and her family in regular attire with photographs featuring the artist dressed as iconic pop culture figures such as Snow White and Marilyn Monroe.

We are in the process of taking stands on the future perspective for our daughters and granddaughters and the generations to follow. – Shelley Niro, artist

Niro’s work channels the ancestral knowledge and traditions of her Mohawk community, often placing indigenous women front and centre. She also challenges popular perceptions of Native Americans through parody. In conversation with STIR, Niro shares that she is deeply concerned about the dissolution of the power that women in Indigenous American communities once held. She tells STIR that when European colonisers came to North America, they closely studied the Iroquoian, Haudenosaunee and Ongweoweh customs and traditions. In Niro’s words, “The women held the power in business and agriculture. They worked the fields and grew the crops for the villages to survive the winter and prosper for the coming year.” To add to Niro’s explanation, while men sat on the ruling council in many Indigenous American communities, they were often appointed by women and could be removed if they were seen as ineffective in their duties. Additionally, they were unable to wage war on rival clans or colonial forces without the assent of the women, who held the right to deny them rations and other necessities. Niro explains that the colonisers initially failed to grasp these complex matriarchal traditions and believed that Indigenous men were the sole decision makers in their communities. However, once they developed a greater understanding of these groups, “[they] had to figure out how to break the chain in this matriarchal system.”

European colonisers relentlessly targeted Native American women. This disrupted the chain of command in Native American communities. Niro says, "Fast forward[ing] to 2024, we like to believe Iroquoian women are still represented as clan mothers and still hold onto the notion of giving instruction for the nation’s benefit. However, the chain is still broken. The murdered and the missing is a big part of the dialogue that circulates in indigenous dynamics. We are in the process of taking stands on the future perspective for our daughters and granddaughters and the generations to follow.” Niro’s works display optimism regarding the future of Indigenous women. This can be seen in the painting Raven’s World (2015), which depicts the artist’s granddaughter peering curiously at a distant entity, while she sits on a stool in a field of corn stalks. Behind her is the moon and the Milky Way galaxy. Corn is a staple of Native American cooking and so Niro’s depiction of her granddaughter places her both on the soil of her ancestors and simultaneously in a position to dream of the cosmos.

Niro has also represented herself as an iconic American personality—such as those highlighted earlier—in the photography This Land is Mime Land. As mentioned, the series also contains images of the artist and her family in everyday Western clothing. She tells STIR, “Images of iconic characters are a part of everyone’s daily life. It is no different for Native Americans. We relate to Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, Santa Claus, the Statue of Liberty, etc., to name a few. I include myself in this depiction as a discourse to say we, Native Americans, are a part of the world. I’ve included images of my family in their ordinary dress and present-day reality, centred in the middle of my series…” As she explains, “[Here], I am showing myself without any symbol of identity.” The series feels like a family album, complete with images from costume parties that have been gathered over the years.

Its mundanity connects Niro, her family and by extension, Native American folk to contemporary society well beyond North America and it is precisely because we know that this is an artistic undertaking with staged photographs of the artist in-costume that we become aware of what is missing in our perception of Native Americans: that they too move through and enjoy everyday life.

The show’s curators include Melissa Bennett, senior curator of contemporary art, AGH, independent curator Greg Hill and David Penney, formerly associate director of museum scholarship, exhibitions and public engagement, Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. The Vancouver Art Gallery presentation is coordinated by Richard Hill, the institution’s Smith Jarislowsky Senior Curator of Canadian Art. The contemporary art exhibition expresses a different vision of Indigenous American cultural identity than the one we are used to seeing in American media. Particularly, it shifts the lens from the famous image of the martially exceptional male native warrior to that of the Native woman, as a mother, daughter, dreamer and a contemporary American.

‘Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch’ is on view at the Vancouver Art Gallery in Canada from September 27, 2024 - February 17, 2025.