The other exhibition at daphne: Karonhiá:ke tiakoiatén:en iakón:kwe teionkhiiahkwatá:se / La Femme du Ciel est partout autour de nous / Sky Woman is all around us, by Shelley Niro, curated by Lori Beavis.
Shelley Niro is a Kanien’kehá:ka artist, Turtle Clan, from Six Nations of the Grand River. Photography, painting, pastel, film, sculpture. In 2017 she received the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts and the Scotiabank Photography Award. Her retrospective, 500 Year Itch, toured from the Smithsonian in New York to the National Gallery of Canada.
Sky Woman
In Haudenosaunee cosmology, Sky Woman is the first human. She falls from Sky World to Turtle Island, her child in her belly, roots in her hands.
Shelley Niro does not paint her as distant or sacred. She gives her the faces of the women around her: her mother, her daughter, her granddaughter, her artist friends. An aviator hat, sunglasses, everyday clothes. Creation becomes an ongoing gesture, carried by women, generation after generation.
Falling, flying, laughing, resting
In Sometimes Mother Earth is a Lazy Teenage Girl, her granddaughter Raven sprawls in an easy chair. Even a figure tied to Mother Earth can take a break. The humour is gentle, but it hits home.
In her pastels, Sky Woman sheds objects as she falls, but keeps her seeds and roots. And the Flying Woman series becomes a sculpture here, Wing (2026): the falling figure, cut apart and reassembled.
As Lori Beavis writes, her Sky Woman “falls, flies, laughs, and rests”.
Info
Until 18 December 2026, at daphne, 5425 avenue Casgrain, unit 103, Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. Monday to Saturday, 12 to 5 pm.
Thank you to Shelley Niro, and to Lori Beavis and the daphne team.