Shelley Niro at Remai Modern, Saskatoon
By Lindsay Sorell
Shelley Niro’s 500 Year Itch is a three-room solo exhibition showing over seventy artworks that span her career from student work at the Ontario College of Art and Design to present-day projects. The title is a play on The Seven Year Itch, a 1955 film starring Marilyn Monroe woven around the concept that, after seven years of marriage, all men are driven to have an affair. Alluding to the colonial relationship between the Indigenous and settler peoples, Niro humorously apprehends a Hollywood narrative and, like the husband in the movie, fantasizes beyond the bounds and expectations of the colonial relationship. As a member of the Bay of Quinte Kanien’kehaka (Mohawk) Nation, Turtle Clan, Niro’s retrospective honours traditional Kanien’kehaka matriarchal ways, traditional knowledge, and history – all within a theatrical frame that subverts and juxtaposes expectations.
Shelley Niro, The Iroquois is a Highly Developed Matriarchal Society, 1991, hand-colored gelatin silver prints, triptych
Niro’s female family members are the key storytellers throughout her lifetime of work. Image after image shows the artist and her sisters dressed up in beehives for a day in town. Her photo The Iroquois is a Highly Developed Matriarchal Society from 1991 acts out a parody of disconnected anthropological textbook descriptions of the Haudenosaunee, while recognizing the continued value of Niro’s female family members and re-asserting the value and presence of women.
Shelley Niro, The Rebel, 1987/2022, hand-tinted gelatin silver print
Women are traditionally relied on for guidance and leadership in Kanien’kehaka traditional life. Raven’s World from 2015 is a series of paintings including three portraits of her only granddaughter Raven: one with Grandmother Moon (protector and guardian of Turtle Island), another with corn (symbol of Haudensaunee survival and sustenance), and the third with an aviator cap (referencing Sky Woman). M: Stories of Women from 2011 features Niro’s daughter Naoga as Sky Woman, a pregnant woman in heels falling through the hole in the sky, guided by geese to turtle island, the beginning of all things. Niro’s mother Chiquita is notably the title image for the whole exhibition. The hand-tinted gelatin silver print called The Rebel (1987/2022) depicts her mother posing in a red shirt and red shoes on the back of a Rebel model of car. Her confidence and joy on display in defiance of confining and dispiriting stereotypes.
Shelley Niro, 500 Year Itch, 1992, gelatin silver print heightened with applied colour, mounted on Masonite
Niro continues the family tradition of subverting stereotypes in her 1992 series of self-portraits titled Mohawk Worker. She dresses up as a construction worker in work boots putting lipstick on, in a blonde wig with a Marilyn Monroe-style halter dress, and as a mime in full costume with white mask, beret, and vest. The series reflects its counterpart, the Sleeping Warrior Series from 2012 that shows an Indigenous man dreaming of different stereotypical patriarchal roles: buffalo hunter, cowboy, soldier, and businessman. Both Indigenous woman and man try out different identities in society, taking on the different masks presented to them or expected of them. They are dreaming of and dreaming past stereotypes toward something real, something better.
Shelley Niro, Abnormally Aboriginal, 2014-2017, colour inkjet prints on canvas
Sometimes taking a darkly humourous approach and other times approaching it with simple seriousness, Niro’s body of work as displayed in 500 Year Itch shows deep care for her family, a personal and present view of matriarchy, and the desire to inspire change toward respect for the Haudenosaunee traditional ways and peoples. Stripping down the dramatic facade of colonial commercialized culture, Niro tenderly reveals the reality of history and a very present grappling with decolonizing identity.
Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch continues until September 21.
Remai Modern: https://remaimodern.org/
The gallery is accessible.
Lindsay Sorell is an artist and researcher based in Waskesiu, Saskatchewan.