Textile Museum of Canada presents Nadia Myre: Balancing Acts, April 25 ? September 15, 2019

Opening reception Wednesday April 24, 6:00 -7:30 pm
Artist will be present ? all are welcome

TORONTO, March 27, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Textile Museum of Canada is pleased to present Balancing Acts, a new exhibition by internationally acclaimed artist Nadia Myre. Balancing Acts is a selection of artwork made over the last ten years and marks Myre's first major solo exhibition in Toronto. This exhibition is a Primary Exhibition of the 2019 Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.

Nadia Myre is a Montreal-based artist of mixed Algonquin and French Canadian heritage. A member of the Kitigan Zibi Anishnabeg First Nation, she draws attention to the power and histories of Indigenous textile practices that she situates in a colonial context. Throughout her 25-year career, Myre's hallmark multidisciplinary methodology has honoured a range of media that actively, yet subtly, engage with the material and the non-material. Through beadwork, textiles, photography, audio, video, and sculpture, she balances ancestral and contemporary methods of working.

"We are delighted to be working with an artist of such significance at this time in history," said Sarah Quinton, Curatorial Director. "Nadia Myre's provocative work considers the cultural and political importance of making by hand alongside the urgencies of caring for one another. She asks us to consider our connections to the environment and to relationships that shape the way we live today."

Balancing Acts speaks to pressing issues of cultural production and loss: a massive red netted textile structure from 2019 flags troubled relationships to our environment; and a collection of black-and-white loom-woven beadwork is a graphic interpretation of the sharper, darker edges of human scars and healing. Her wallpaper print, Contact in Monochrome (Toile de Jouy) (2018) is a jumble of colonial and Indigenous motifs: 19th-century European beaver-pelt top hats, imposing architecture, tobacco leaves, wigwams, and birch bark canoes all acknowledge intercultural histories. Nadia Myre explores the politics of belonging by positioning her practice through a poetic, feminist backdrop of craft, care, and resilience.

Nadia Myre: Balancing Acts is organized by the Textile Museum of Canada and is generously supported by presenting sponsor BMO Financial Group.

Nadia Myre (b. 1974) is a Montreal-based interdisciplinary artist of mixed Algonquin and French-Canadian heritage. A member of the Kitigan Zibi Anishnabeg First Nation, her work explores the politics of belonging by positioning her practice within a framework of resistance and resilience. She is the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Art Practices at Concordia University, Montreal.

Myre is the recipient of numerous commissions and awards, and her work appears in publications such as ArtForum, Art Journal, ArtNews, Canadian Art, Esse, ETC, Le Monde, New York Times, Parachute, Spirale, and the Washington Post.

Media Inquiries

Caitlin Donnelly, Communications Coordinator
416-599-5321 x2239 or [email protected]

Zile Liepins, Communications & Design Coordinator
416-599-5321 x2239 or [email protected]

High-resolution images: textilemuseum.wordpress.com