nanâtohkokwâsowak / They sew patchwork blankets / Bidakiigiwewog / They put needles into fabric at sīkwan, Saskatoon
By Tenille K. Campbell
Wally Dion, Antidote, 2025, tulle and embroidery
I have been thinking about art lately—what it means to create, what it means to transfer story through needle and thread. My mother quilts. I bead. My daughter has learned to do both, gathering her own memories alongside ours through a shared language of stitch and mend. I’ve been thinking about time and patience, about the laughter that rises in rooms where aunties gather around fabric and conversation, hands busy while stories move between them.
KC Adams, Morning Star, 2026, billboard project
When I walked into the sīkwan (formerly known as AKA) gallery showcasing nanâtohkokwâsowak / They sew patchwork blanket / Bidakiigiwewog / They put needles into fabric (co-curated by Jen Smith and Tarin Dehod), I was reminded that the act of quilting is both an act of remembrance and creation. It is not only the making of objects, but the making visible of relationships stretched across time and place. This group exhibition includes work by KC Adams. As a photographer, I am familiar with her work and in awe of her birchbark starblanket billboard that now watches over 20th Street. Other featured artists include Kishey A., Wally Dion, Norma Houle and Sarah Houle, Niki Little and Bre Little, and Holly Aubichon. I had also previously worked with Holly, and knew her work to be full of good intentions and history.
Little Sisters, Mending Home, 2026, Lucy Little’s quilt, cotton, thread, cardboard, paint
As I moved through the gallery, each piece felt like a conversation waiting to happen. I had seen Dion’s art online before, but to see the room-filling quilted fabric titled Antidote – so sheer and delicate, yet mended with such care and decorated with embroidered florals – reminded me to stop and allow myself to be overwhelmed. This work was built in community, by community, pieced together day by day. Nearby, a cardboard house featuring images of artists Breanna and Niki Little as youth in the cut-out windows, with the roof formed from a starblanket quilt where each sister sewed their own half, confident they would meet in the middle, aligned, made me remember building forts in my own childhood home, where everything was safer, easier, protected.
Holly Aubichon, she sits in her robe and sweats, 2024, textile worn object made from grandma Marian Ogrodnick’s quilt
Holly Aubichon’s quilt-turned-coat, accurately titled she sits in her robe and sweats, told a story of recreating pieces from matriarchs into an embrace you can carry with you. Her second work, My Medicine Belt, was a belt filled with loomwork design and featured pieces she had created and beaded – a medicine bag, a knife, a copper kettle. Items created to protect, woven together with intent, woven into good medicine.
nanâtohkokwâsowak / They sew patchwork blanket / Bidakiigiwewog / They put needles into fabric, 2026, installation view at sīkwan, Saskatoon
The art itself reminded me that kinship is an action, that relationships take work. These bodies of work, quilted together, were a visceral and physical embodiment of the emotional and spiritual labour that goes into retaining, remembering, and honoring the relationships we have with our communities, with our kin, and with ourselves. The exhibition is an act of love.
It also feels particularly relevant in a time when so many of us are searching for ways to remain connected to one another. The works in this exhibition remind us that community is not something that simply exists; it is something we make, maintain, and mend. Each stitch, bead, and patch becomes evidence of a relationship, a commitment to carrying stories forward. Together, these artists demonstrate that creation is never a solitary act. It is rooted in the people who came before us and offered as a gift to those who will come after.
nanâtohkokwâsowak / They sew patchwork blanket / Bidakiigiwewog / They put needles into fabric continues until June 26, 2026.
sīkwan: sikwan.ca
The gallery is accessible.
Tenille K. Campbell is a Dene/Métis author, poet, and professional photographer from English River First Nation, Saskatchewan. She holds a PhD in English from the University of Saskatchewan and is the creator of sweetmoon photography, specializing in natural light portraiture and capturing Indigenous joy.