Michelle Sound (Cree, Métis)

Bio

(b. 1977 Vancouver, BC; Cree, Métis)

Michelle Sound is a Cree and Métis artist, educator and mother. She is a member of Wapsewsipi Swan River First Nation in Northern Alberta. Her mother is Cree from Kinuso, Alberta, Treaty 8 territory and her father’s family is Métis from the Buffalo Lake Métis settlement in central Alberta. She was born and raised on the unceded and ancestral home territories of the xwmƏƟkwƏýƏm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and SƏĺílwƏtaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations where she currently resides and works.

 

Michelle’s latest exhibition Holding It Together is a mixed-media series that features nine large-scale monochromatic photo reproductions from the artist’s personal archive; pictures of her and her kin, her home territory, and scans from the dictionary from where she learned the Cree language. Each of the images have been torn and damaged at first, but then found repair through traditional ways of art-making; beading, quillwork, stitching, and caribou hair tufting are all at play throughout the series, serving as a visual representation of how the artist has co-existed and continues to co-exist with the effects of colonization.

 

“These images contain loss, grief, longing and memory. The images are ripped to show the colonial violence that my family, and other Indigenous families, have experienced including residential school intergenerational trauma, loss of language, and displacement from our territories. These losses can never be fully healed but we can talk about our histories and realities through art, culture and stories.” – Michelle Sound

 

Available Work

BIRTHDAY 2022, MONOCHROME PRINT ON PAPER, EMBROIDERY THREAD, SEED BEADS, BAKERS TWINE, CARIBOU TUFTING, 39.25” X 51.5”

Birthday

2022,

Monochrome print on paper, embroidery thread, seed beads, bakers twine, caribou tufting,

39.25” x 51.5”

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