Boarder X Artists

Mark Igloliorte

Mark Igloliorte is an Inuk artist living in Vancouver, BC whose Inuit ancestry comes from Nunatsiavut, NL. His artistic work, primarily painting and drawing, has been exhibited in group and solo shows across Canada. He has been the recipient of a number of awards and grants including the Lillian Vineberg Award in Painting and Drawing, The Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council Visual Arts Grant, and a Canada Council for the Arts Emerging Artist Grant. In 2012 Igloliorte was long listed for the Sobey Art Award. Igloliorte teaches painting and drawing as an Assistant Professor at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. 

Les Ramsay

Les Ramsay is a Métis artist currently living and working in Vancouver, BC. He studied visual arts at Emily Carr University of Art and Design and at the Universitat de Politecnica in Valencia, and recently completed his MFA in painting and drawing at Concordia University. Ramsay is currently represented by Galerie Antoine Ertaskiran, Montreal. His work has been exposed in Canada, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Germany and in the United States.

Roger Crait

Roger Crait is a Status Indian from Winnipeg, MB. He studied Fine Arts at the University of Manitoba. Crait has had solo exhibitions in Canada, including Winnipeg, Thunder Bay, ON, Fort McMurray, AB, Moncton, NB, Edmonton, AB, Ottawa, ON, and a performance in Vancouver, BC. Crait has shown in group exhibitions locally, nationally and internationally, including Glenbow Museum, AB, Fowler Museum, USA, and Boomali  Art Centre, Australia. Crait has received awards for painting, including the Molly Hyman Award in Art for two consecutive years. Crait has a solo exhibitition at the Urban Shaman Gallery in the summer of 2017, a solo exhibit at Gallery 101 in Ottawa, ON and has taken part as an artist at The Works Festival in Edmonton, AB. Crait worked with a group of ten artists in Cranberry Portage on a sculpture for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. His artwork has appeared in The Manitoban, the Uniter, Winnipeg Free Press, Uptown Magazine, BorderCrossings, Borderline, and twice was on the cover of Canadian Dimension Magazine. Crait currently lives and works in Winnipeg, MB. 

Steven Davies

Steven Davies is a Canadian filmmaker of Coast Salish (Snuneymuwx) and European descent based on Vancouver Island. Davies’ practice is collaborative and community driven, and often follows stories of cultural resurgence that infuse a sense of pride. His earlier works include The Re-naming of PKOLS, the WSÁNEC First Nations take a revolutionary step to reclaim and re-name a sacred mountain in their traditional territory, Discovery Island, a dramatic film about a young Indigenous man who moves to an isolated island to prove his love and worth as a father, and Ahousat going? A Portrait of the Ahousaht, a documentary film that follows the West Coast community’s response to a suicide crisis in 2004. 

Mason Mashon

Mason Mashon’s photography draws from a deep well of influence. Growing up in Vernon, BC, and having spent much of his adult life residing in Whistler, BC, he honed his craft in a location known worldwide as the holy grail of action sports. Pursuing the activities he loved, Mashon became one of the most prolific Whistler ski, snowboard and mountain bike photographers in an area saturated with camera talent. Surfing had always been an infatuation for Mason and it was only natural for him to shoot it. A professional mountain biker in his own right, he has often been the subject of others’ lenses and has appeared in magazines internationally. As a presenter Mashon hosted the largest mountain bike festival in the world, Crankworx Whistler, to a crowd of thousands. Starting in 2013 he began hosting an action sports TV show, UnderExposed, that followed his life as a freelance action sports photographer. It is now airing in Canada on APTN, and in the US on Outside TV. 

Meghan O'Brien

Meghann O’Brien is an independent snowboarder and Northwest Coast textile artist working in the traditions of basketry, Yeil Koowu (Raven’s Tail) and Naaxiin (Chilkat) weaving. She is descended from the Kwakwaka’wakw village of Weka’yi T’sakwa’lutan (Cape Mudge), the village of Kiusta, Haida Gwaii, and Dublin, Ireland. Her name in the Kwakwala language is Kwaxhi’laga-”Smoke Coming Out of the Top of the Big House, Welcoming People to Feast and Potlatch”. In the Haida language she carries the name Jaad Kuujus- ”Dear Woman”. Her early years were spent primarily as a snowboarder and fisherwoman in the community of Alert Bay, near Vancouver Island. In 2007 O’Brien began working in basketry with Donna Cranmer and Kerri Dick, and later learned Raven’s Tail weaving with Sherri Lightbown in Masset, BC. She then completed a strict traditional apprenticeship under master Chilkat weaver William White. In 2011, she made the career shift from professional snowboarder to full-time artist. O’Brien’s artistic process is one of devotion to the highest expression of the art form, with a focused intention to interpret and express the teachings received through the process of creating works. 

Jordan Bennett

Jordan Bennett is a Mi’kmaq multi-disciplinary visual artist from Stephenville Crossing, Ktaqmkuk (NL). Bennett has shown extensively in Canada and abroad, in venues such as The Museum of Art and Design, NYC, NY; Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, NM; Project Space Gallery, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia; The Power Plant, Toronto, ON; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Montreal, QC; Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, France; The Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC and most recently was one of two artists to represent Newfoundland and Labrador at the 2015 Venice Biennial at Galleria Ca’Rezzonico, Venice, Italy. Bennett was long listed for the 2016 and 2015 Sobey Art Awards, presented with the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council’s Artist of the Year, received the Excellence in Visual Arts Newfoundlands’ Large Year Award and was named as one of the artists in the 2014 Blouin ARTINFO’s Top 30 under 30 in Canada.

Amanda Strong

Amanda Strong is an Indigenous filmmaker, media artist and stop motion director currently based out of unceded Coast Salish territories also known as Vancouver. She is the Owner and Director of Spotted Fawn Productions, an animation and media-based studio. A labour of love, Amanda's productions are collaborations with a diverse and talented group of artists putting emphasis on support and training women and Indigenous artists.

Amanda's work explores the ideas of blood memory and Indigenous oral story. Her background in photography, illustration and media extend into her award-winning stop motion animations. Her films Indigo (2014) and Mia' (2015) challenge conventional structures of storytelling in cinema and have screened internationally, most notably at Cannes, TIFF, VIFF, and Ottawa International Animation Festival. Amanda has received numerous grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and the NFB. In 2013, Amanda was the recipient of the K.M. Hunger Artist Award for Film and Video, and most recently the recipient of the 2015 Vancouver Mayor's Arts Award for Emerging Film and Media Artist.

In 2017, Alanis Obomsawin, one of Canada's most distinguished documentary filmmakers, was the recipient of the Technicolor Clyde Gilmour Award. With the award comes the honour of gifting $50,000 in post-production funds to any Canadian filmmaker. She chose Amanda Strong.

Bracken Hanuse Corlett

Bracken Hanuse Corlett is an interdisciplinary artist hailing from the Wuikinuxv and Klahoose Nations. He began working in theatre and performance in 2001 and eventually transitioned towards his current practice that fuses painting and drawing with digital-media, audio-visual performance, animation and narrative. He is a grad­uate of the En’owkin Centre of Indigenous Art and went to Emily Carr University of Art and Design for Visual Arts. He has studied Northwest Coast art, carving and design from acclaimed Heiltsuk artists Bradley Hunt and his sons Shawn Hunt and Dean Hunt. He was a recipient of the 2014 BC Creative Achievement Award for Aboriginal Art and has recently received public art commissions from the City of Vancouver and the City of Victoria. He splits time between the confines of his studio in the Downtown Eastside and his home on the Sunshine Coast. 

Some of his notable exhibitions, performances and screenings have been at Grunt Gallery, Museum of Anthropology, Unit PITT Projects, Vancouver International Film Festival, Vancouver Art Gallery,Institute of Modern Art – Brisbane, Three Walls Gallery, Paramount Theater, Ottawa International Animation Festival, SAW Gallery, Royal BC Museum, Open Space, Winnipeg Art Gallery, Urban Shaman, Mackenzie Art Gallery, ImagineNative and Toronto International Film Festival.

Micheal Langan

Micheal Langan is a Saulteaux artist from Cote First Nation, Treaty 4 Territory, who is committed to educating people through creative and haunting renderings of our colonial past. 

In Summer 2015 Micheal launched his own skateboard company— Colonialism Skateboards—to draw attention to, and have people engage with, complex and untelling aspects of Indigenous Canadian history and culture. By combining skateboard art with a history lesson of Indigenous culture and colonialism in Canada, Micheal’s innovative approach is leading a conversation about how Canadians, especially youth, can move forward together through truth and reconciliation. 

Profoundly influenced by his upbringing and experiences as an inter­generational Residential School survivor, Micheal’s initiative has grown and expanded beyond the realm of skateboarding. He has been invit­ed to school classrooms as well as various community panels across Canada to speak about his company and its mandate. 

Recently, Colonialism Skateboards collaborated with Cree artist, Kent Monkman, to highlight colonialism and the Residential School system through his painting, The Scream. The company is very honored to continue collaborating with Kent Monkman on another project, The Four Continents. This skateboard series highlights colonialism, war, indulgence, sexuality, and several cultural and social issues stemming from colonization.

Meghan Musseau

Meagan Musseau is an interdisciplinary visual artist of Mi’kmaq and French ancestry from Elmastukwek within the Ktaqmkuk terri­tory of Mi’kma’ki (Bay of Islands, Newfoundland). She works with customary art practices and new media, such as beadwork, basket­ry, land-based action and installation to explore memory, language, and the relationship between land and body, object and narrative. Recent exhibitions include PEJIPUK | the winter is coming, Eastern Edge Gallery, NL (2018); Oneself, and one another, Ace Art Inc., MB (2018); Boarder X, MacKenzie Art Gallery, SK (2018); and Woven Together, Kelowna Art Gallery, BC (2018). Musseau’s work has been supported by awards such as the Emerging Artist Award, VANL-CARFAC (2018); Atlantic Canadian Emerging Artist Residency at the Banff Centre, the Hnatyshyn Foundation (2018); Aboriginal Arts Development Award, First Peoples’ Cultural Council (2016); and Corner Brook Emerging Artist of the Year (2013).