This thesis builds upon an Indigenous feminist archive by analyzing the exhibition Changers: A Spiritual Renaissance within the social and political art climate of the 1980s and 1990s. Changers is the first contemporary art exhibition in Canada highlighting work by Indigenous women artists from the perspective of an Indigenous woman curator. It was organized by the Indian Art Centre (now the Indigenous Art Centre) in 1989 and curated by Wolastoqey elder, artist, and writer Shirley Bear of Neqotkuk (Tobique First Nation).
The systematic disempowerment of Indigenous women provided the grounds for women’s activism, which paved a path for self-determination and amplified women’s political voice beginning with the “Indian Women’s Movement.” Changers represents a specific expression of feminism initiated by Bear’s activism in the 80s and 90s. Her exhibition text an instrumental tool to Indigenous women’s art history, as it addresses colonialist and patriarchal narratives imposed on Indigenous peoples, specifically how these systems impact the women. The exhibition serves as a counter-narrative and strategy to recenter Indigenous women’s art, experience, and excellence.
Bear’s exhibition advanced discussions around visual sovereignty, survival, refusal, decolonial aesthetics, by drawing on feminist scholars such as Jolene Rickard, Sherry Farrell Racette, and Julie Nagam. The exhibition demonstrates Indigenous relational aesthetics – an Indigenous feminist framework from Jas M. Morgan (previously Lindsay Nixon) – that centers relationships and care through kinship networks.