Graduate Symposium

Schedule of Events

Keynote Speaker

Demian DinéYazhi ́ is a Portland-based Diné transdisciplinary artist, poet, and curator born to the clans Naasht’ézhí Tábąąhá (Zuni Clan Water’s Edge) & Tódích’íí’nii (Bitter Water). Their practice is a regurgitation of purported Decolonial praxis informed by the over accumulation and exploitative supremacist nature of hetero cisgender communities. DinéYazhi´'s praxis interrogates normative spaces by refusing to settle or perform for exploitative galleries and publishers that act as gatekeepers to the lethargic, toxic legacy of Western paradigms. They are a survivor of attempted european genocide, forced assimilation, manipulation, sexual and gender violence, capitalist sabotage, and hypermarginalization in a colonized country that refuses to center its politics and philosophies around the Indigenous Peoples whose Land it occupies and refuses to give back. They live and work in a post-post-apocalyptic world unafraid to fail. @heterogeneoushomosexual

Skawennati investigates history, the future, and change from her perspective as an urban Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) woman and as a cyberpunk avatar. Her early adoption of cyberspace as both a location and a medium for her practice has produced groundbreaking projects such as CyberPowWow and TimeTraveller™. She creates machinimas—movies made in virtual environments—as well as still images, textiles and sculpture.

Her works have been presented in Europe, Oceania, China and across North America in biennials, group exhibitions and solo shows. They are included in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada and the Thoma Foundation, among others. She was honored to receive a 2020 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship and a Visiting Artist Fellowship at the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library. Recipient of an Honorary Doctorate from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, she is also a proud member of the Guild of Future Architects. She is represented by ELLEPHANT. Skawennati has been active in various communities. In the 80s she joined the nuclear-disarmament peace group, SAGE (Students Against Global Extermination), and the Quebec Native Women’s Association. In the 90s she co-founded Nation to Nation, a First Nations artist collective, while working in and with various Indigenous organizations and artist-run centres, including the Native Friendship Centre of Montreal and Oboro. In 2005, she co-founded Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace (AbTeC), a research-creation network based at Concordia University whose projects include the Skins workshops on Aboriginal Storytelling and Digital Media as well as the Initiative for Indigenous Futures. Throughout most of the teens, she volunteered extensively for her children’s elementary school, where she also initiated an Indigenous Awareness programme. In 2019, she co-founded centre d’art daphne, Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal’s first Indigenous artist-run centre.

Born in Kahnawà:ke Mohawk Territory, Skawennati belongs to the Turtle clan. She holds a BFA from Concordia University in Montreal, where she resides.