Christi Belcourt and Isaac Murdoch’s Uprising: The Power of Mother Earth

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Photo Credit: Justin Wonnacott

Christi Belcourt, "Resilience of the Flower Beadwork People," 1999

acrylic on canvas, 122 x 91 cm. Collection of Amanda Greener and Shane Belcourt.

Over the last two decades, the renowned Michif (Métis) artist Christi Belcourt has developed a holistic social practice combining art and activism.

This is the first retrospective of Belcourt’s work. It traces her practice from its beginnings, in the early 1990s, to the present, and concludes with recent works made collaboratively with Isaac Murdoch, an Anishinaabe knowledge keeper and emerging visual artist.

The exhibition is comprised of more than thirty major Belcourt paintings, loaned by numerous private collectors and by such public institutions as the National Gallery of Canada, Wabano Centre for Aboriginal Health, Art Gallery of Ontario, Canadian Museum of History, Thunder Bay Art Gallery, and Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada. It also includes Murdoch’s iconic images, such as Thunderbird Woman, which feature prominently on the front lines of the resistance movement against resource extraction.

Since forming the Onaman Collective with Erin Konsmo and Isaac Murdoch in 2014, Belcourt’s advocacy work has intensified. She shares with Murdoch what she describes as the most important professional and creative partnership of her life. At their community-based art events, Belcourt and Murdoch mobilize and motivate people to get informed, to care, to take action.