PRAIRIE THUNDER opening reception at AGSM

More About this Event

Join the artists and curators of the exciting new exhibition, Prairie Thunder, for a reception and performance on Saturday, April 5, 2025.

Opening prayer: 6 PM

Performance by Cheyenne LeGrande and Cikwes: 6:30 PM

--

Cheyenne Rain LeGrande ᑭᒥᐊᐧᐣ is a Nehiyaw artist, from Bigstone Cree Nation. They currently reside in Amiskwaciy Waskahikan also known as Edmonton, Alberta. Their work is an expression of love, intergenerational resilience and intergenerational joy. Through the use of their body and language, they speak to the past, present and future. Cheyenne’s work is rooted in the strength to feel, express and heal. Their work explores the hybrid space between tradition and nehiyaw pop culture. Bringing her ancestors with her, she moves through installation, photography, fashion, video, sound, and performance art.

Cikwes is a nehiyaw ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐤ soul singer songwriter and Juno nominee from Bigstone Cree Nation.

--

Prairie Thunder is a group exhibition of contemporary Indigenous women artists with a relationship to the prairies whose practices are conspicuously informed and sustained by kinship. The title evokes the strength, power, and relationships of prairie people and includes works by Cree, Métis, Anishinaabe and Dakota contemporary artists. The artworks in the exhibition highlight the power and spirit of healing generated by relationships to the land and kin, with special focus on mother-daughter bonds. Artists Lori Blondeau, Jessie Jannuska, Cheyenne Rain LeGrande & Cikwes, Audie Murray & Lucille Fisher, and Michelle Sound prompt us to consider the rhythm and ritual of relationship through their various practices, which include textile, printmaking, painting, performance, photography, and film. These artists’ practices are power lines; they are the conduits of knowledge, generated through circuits of relationality. Prairie Thunder is a generative site of knowledge transmission, reciprocity, resistance, and futurity.

Curated by Marie-Anne Redhead and Stacey Koosel and on display April 3rd to June 7th, 2025 in the AGSM Main Gallery.