Rupert Button Ruth Cuthand

Size: 1.5" 
A button featuring: Ruth Cuthand, I was Colonized by the British...Rupert, 2024, styrofoam, hand-tanned smoked deer hide, elk hide, courtesy of the artist. From the exhibition Beads in the Blood / mīgisak mīgohk: A Ruth Cuthand Retrospective. 

For four decades, Saskatchewan-based artist Ruth Cuthand has influenced the contemporary art landscape in Canada with her narrative-driven artwork. Cuthand has been instrumental in the development of an experimental and expansive Indigenous art practice grounded in critically relevant subject matter. As a matriarch in Indigenous contemporary art practice, she has mentored generations of Indigenous artists and prompted shifts in how artists engage with community knowledge.

During her career, Ruth has repeatedly found new ways to approach familiar mediums, provoking new paths for visualizing the experience of Indigenous people living through settler colonialism. Curator Felicia Gay looks at Cuthand’s career from 1983 to 2024. The exhibition comprises new and past works, including video, mixed-media installation, photography, and collaborative story-work between Cuthand and Gay. Cuthand critiques historical and contemporary narratives with humour and biting wit, highlighting the enduring effects of the colonial project as well as the enduring strength of Indigenous people in Canada. Beads in the Blood / mīgisak mīgohk – A Ruth Cuthand Retrospective will encapsulate Cuthand’s diverse range of interests and strategies and engage communities with stories that encourage knowing, caution, and continuation or survival.