Skawennati

Early life and education

Skawennati was born in Kahnawake Mohawk reserve in Quebec, home to a sizeable concentration of Mohawk artists and curators. She grew up in the suburb of Châteauguay. In 1992, she earned a BFA in Design Arts and in 1995, a Graduate Diploma of Institutional Administration (Arts Specialization) at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec. Her first position after graduation was with the artist-run Oboro Gallery in Montreal.

Work

Through New Media forms, Skawennati addresses history, the future, and change, particularly as they relate to Aboriginal cultures. Her focus is on creating and critiquing digital indigenous environments. In 2001 she created Imagining Indians in the 25th Century for Storybook Story curated by Luanne Martineau at the Art Gallery of Calgary. Skawennati's first major online project was the CyberPowWow, an online gathering that occurred several times between 1997 and 2004, usually hosted through galleries such as the Walter Phillips Gallery and arts institutions such as the Banff Centre. The central thrust of CyberPowerWow was to create an aboriginal territory in cyberspace. CyberPowWow—a chat room functioning as an interactive digital art gallery, allowing people to form communities both online and in real life—provided "a means for indigenous artists and storytellers to secure footing in the digital urban." Skawennati worked with eight indigenous artists and writers who customized the space with images, scripts, and indigenous avatars. In 2011, she was awarded an Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship which recognized her as one of "the best and most relevant native artists." Her machinima series TimeTraveller^TM has episodes on the death of Mohawk saint Kateri Tekakwitha, the Dakota Sioux Uprising of 1862, the 1990 Oka Crisis, and other watershed events in indigenous history. This multiplatform work "resist[s] pan-Indian and neo-luddite stereotypes of First Nations peoples." Furthermore, it seeks to highlight the "misinterpretation and abuse of Indigenous art and people." She is a multiple award winner, particularly for her project TimeTraveller™, a nine episode machinima series that used science fiction to examine First nations histories. In 2015 she represented Canada at the Biennial of the Americas.

She is the co-founder of Nation to Nation and Co-Director, with Jason E. Lewis, of Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace (AbTeC), a research network based at Concordia that holds workshops on Indigenous virtual environments. As part of this research network, Skawennati is currently the coordinator of Concordia's Milieux Indigenous Futures project which is dedicated to exploring the narratives, technologies, and frameworks for how Indigenous people are imagining the futures of their communities and families. Skawennati is one of the first recipients of the First People's Curatorial Residency grant, established in 1997 by the Canada Council for the Arts.

Exhibitions

Awards

Skawennati was a 2011 Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellow, and a Best New Media winner at ImagineNATIVE in 2009 for TimeTraveller™ and in 2013 with the AbTeC collective for Skahiòn:hati – Rise of the Kanien’kenhá:ka Legends.