SMALL GALLERY

June 27 – August 17, 2025

Nadine Ryan

We all experience death yet rarely talk about it. Death as a subject is generally feared, avoided, and censored. But Indigenous Knowledges have much to offer and can inspire different perspectives. Growing up within a family that doesn’t follow dominant Euro-Western views of death and dying, Nadine Ryan is interested in provoking reconsideration of life and death as relational, cyclical processes that are not bound by time and space.

Building from Ryan’s 2022 exhibit in Toronto, she presents works that ponder this subject, and that consider our connections beyond the physical realm. Underlying themes include kinship and dreaming as a portal to knowledge, our ancestors, and the land. She hopes this exhibit will inspire reflection and conversation around questions we all share: Where do we come from? And where are we going?

Ryan is a shíshálh and settler artist who grew up outside the shíshálh community on Sḵwx̱wú7mesh territory. Currently, she’s based in Tkaronto on Anishnabeg, Haudenosaunee, and Huron-Wendat territories.