REGINA — The city of Regina has introduced its first Indigenous artist in residence Monday.
She is Audie Murray, a Métis visual artist based out of Regina. According to the city, Murray will explore the theme of Urban Indigeneity during her time as artist in residence.
“I’m ecstatic about being artist in residence,” said Murray on Monday. “The project is really perfect when I saw the call-out, it really aligned with a lot of the projects that I’d been wanting to kind of get started.”
One of her projects will be a large-scale bead work, a wall hanging done through the process of by-hand bead weaving, which she says will be a continuance of previous works she has done.
Another project Murray is excited about doing is supporting local Indigenous youth through a youth mentorship program. She told reporters she is really excited about getting these projects rolling and said she would love to work with youth in some capacity into the future.
Murray’s works have exhibited at Independent Art Fair, NYC; the Vancouver Art Gallery; Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow; and the Anchorage Museum. She currently has works on display at the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina in Radical Stitch.
“Right now, I’m really focusing on bead work, and looking at the past, specifically family bead work from my family and kind of reworking that into the now to understand how Indigenous people … exist in all these different ways in contemporary times. I am also really interested in this idea of abstraction in my artwork, so not giving imagery to the viewer right away but still having that information within the artwork. My hope with that is that the viewer is able to spend more time with the artwork, to really delve into the layers and the histories that are present.”
Murray said she started beading about 10 years ago, but started taking bead work more seriously when she started art school, “because I thought it was such a beautiful material and it really encapsulated and communicated a lot of what I wanted to talk about in ways that aren’t so overt.”
Murray holds a visual arts diploma from Camosun College, a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Regina and is currently finishing a Masters in Fine Arts at the University of Calgary.
Regarding the process in which she develops her art: “I think every artwork kind of has a different process and looks a different way. This one specifically, that I’m going to be working on during my residency with the city, is going to be a wall hanging that really talks about this idea of urban indigeneity. So, the process with this piece is I’m really going to be reflecting on what that means to me and having conversations with the youth that I’ll be working with around all the layers of urban indigeneity because there's so much there, and trying to put that into a design work.”
Mark Sylvestre, co-ordinator of Cultural Development for the City of Regina, said the development of artist in residence is in direct relation to the city of Regina’s approval in 2016 of their Cultural Plan.
“Our hope is to strengthen the Indigenous cultural presence, and align with the other goal of the Cultural Plan of supporting artists in the arts community,” he said.
Council had approved the Indigenous artist in residence position in its budget at the end of 2021. Sylvester said from that point on he worked with a strong group of Indigenous artists who shaped and guided them through the process.
“The support from the Indigenous artist community in Regina and beyond has been amazing,” said Sylvestre.
The City had issued an open call for an indigenous artist in residence in June. Seven strong applications were submitted and an expert panel of art professionals reviewed the applications and conducted interviews, and they recommended Murray for the position.
The residency will be over the next five months to the end of December. The hope is for Murray's work to be finished by then and join their collection, with the goal to have it featured on the main floor of City Hall.
While Murray is the first Indigenous artist in residence, the indication is she will not be the last. Sylvestre said council has approved an ongoing annual budget for the position.
Sylvestre said having this position is important to Regina and area to “show our ongoing commitment to our Cultural Plan and the Indigenous cultural presence, and it also shows our commitment to responding to truth and reconciliation.”
