For more than 50 years, Shelley Niro (Six Nations Reserve, Bay of Quinte Mohawk, Turtle Clan), has been creating art built upon Kanyen’kehá:ka (Mohawk) philosophies, deep understandings of history and a woman-centered worldview. She confronts challenges faced by her people living on the Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve in southern Ontario, Canada: They suffer from the persistent impact of colonial wars and pangenerational trauma from the racist policies of Canada and the United States. Day-to-day, the experience of being an Indigenous person is infused with irony. Yet she tempers hard truths with playfulness, complexity and wit. She celebrates women’s power, empowerment and the obligations of family as a path to a more equitable and just future. Throughout, Niro insists upon the healing and regenerative powers of art and laughter.
The “500 Year Itch” exhibition, now open at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York, celebrates more than a half century of Shelley Niro’s paintings, photographs, mixed-media works and films. Accessible to all, often humorous and peppered with references to popular culture, her art digs deep into the timeless cultural knowledge and generational histories of her Six Nations Kanyen’kehá:ka community to provide purpose and healing. Excerpts from that exhibition follow.
“Abnormally Aboriginal,” 2014 (2022 reprint); color inkjet on canvas; 54" x 34". Collection of the artist.
Courtesy of Shelley Niro
Memory
Memory turns a place into a home. Shelley Niro’s works meditate upon ancestral memories of home and its violent dispossession as well as the way memory is reinforced and renewed by ceremony. Once the homeland of the Kanyen’kehá:ka (Mohawk) people, the Mohawk Valley of New York state was recalled fondly to Niro by her father, as it was described to him by his grandmother. Neither lived there, nor had the Kanyen’kehá:ka people for generations; their ancestors were forced to leave by George Washington’s armies during the American Revolution. Niro’s childhood home was the Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve, where the Kanyen’kehá:ka refugees settled on land reserved for them by the British after the conclusion of the war. There, they restored their community and its connections to ancient teachings and ceremony. Niro’s work reflects on these ancestral memories of home and dispossession and how they resonate in the present.
Seeing with My Memory“Tutela Heights is a place along the Grand River where the Tutela Indians once lived, and they were a nation of people that came to Six Nations for refuge. My dad used to take us there when we were kids, and as time goes on, then, you know, these memories flood back into my own mind. And, of course, I can invent the story of what went on. It just became a very rich source for me to return to. And a lot of people in my community also have those stories and memories as well. I just like to think that, you know, Six Nations were quite capable of providing comfort for people when they were in need. So it’s just a comforting thought for myself.”
— Shelley Niro
“Seeing With My Memory,” 2000; oil on canvas; 50" x 40". Collection of the artist.
Courtesy of Shelley Niro
The military campaign to destroy the Kanyen’kehá:ka (Mohawk) and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy during the American Revolution inspired Niro to create this elaborate work.
La Pieta series, 2007; “Passage,” 40" x 28"; inkjet on canvas. National Museum of the American Indian 26/7463.
Photo by NMAI Staff
The nude male torso in Hearing Trees Fall emphasizes the human cost of war.
La Pieta series, 2007; “Hearing Trees Fall,” 40" x 50"; inkjet on canvas. National Museum of the American Indian 26/7463.
Photo by NMAI Staff
Images of land and trees represent memories of lost homelands and hope for the future. The landforms, trees and water emphasize that places—these specific locations—become vessels for collective memory.
La Pieta series, 2007; “Sorrow,” 40" x 60"; inkjet on canvas. National Museum of the American Indian 26/7463.
Photo by NMAI Staff
Matriarchy
The Kanyen’kehá:ka (Mohawk), as part of the greater Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy, are a matriarchal society. Women are looked to for leadership, guidance and stability. The origins of this way of thought, and of the world in general, lead back to a young pregnant woman who fell through a hole in the Sky World to Turtle Island, our earth; Sky Woman and the daughter she bore were the first to live upon it. Niro is drawn to Sky Woman’s journey as a metaphor of female potential, growth and empowerment. Many of Niro’s works show us women in motion, some inspired by the Sky Woman story: they fly through the air, wear old-fashioned aviator caps, voyage in canoes or grow to face the challenges and responsibilities of their time. Implicitly, Niro critiques the patriarchal structure of our modern world that confines and undermines women’s power and leadership.
Traveling Through“I painted this woman with a canoe behind her and around her are beadwork designs. And very often women were just kind of, you know, not really acknowledged or they’re often tossed aside. And I wanted to use a canoe {in this painting] as a means to transport yourself. So it’s imagination. I just like to think that the canoe can take you from one place to another place. It doesn’t have to be a real canoe. It can be a metaphor for what your life is going to be.”
— Shelley Niro
“Traveling Through,” 2013; oil on canvas; 80" x 56". Collection of the artist.
Courtesy of Shelley Niro
“M: Stories of Women” was created in 2011, and it was during a time when I was starting to go to ceremonies that was marking the murdered and the missing in Canada. So I went to a few and after a while I thought, ‘I can’t come here anymore. It’s too sad.’ I thought as an artist, ‘What can I do?’ And it really comes down to portraying women and what they’ve contributed to society. At first, I put “M” because I started thinking about murder and missing and motherhood and matriarchy, all that sort of thing.”
— Shelley Niro
“Ancestors,” 2011 (2022 reprint); color inkjet print; 53” x 33”. National Museum of the American Indian 27/643.
Photo by NMAI Staff
“Finding her Helpers,” 2011 (2022 reprint); color inkjet print; 53” x 33”. National Museum of the American Indian 27/643.
Photo by NMAI Staff
“Memories of Flight,” 2011 (2022 reprint); color inkjet print; 53” x 33”. National Museum of the American Indian 27/643.
Photo by NMAI Staff
“Legacy,” 2011 (2022 reprint); color inkjet print; 53” x 33”. National Museum of the American Indian 27/643.
Photo by NMAI Staff
Actors
Masks, makeup, paint, costumes, staging: Niro uses the tools of theater and storytelling to critique history and modern life with humor and playfulness—like a sugar coating for a bitter pill. Narrative texts and provocative titles accompany her suites of photographs. Several works tell stories with images accompanied by texts, like an excerpt from a graphic novel. Niro began making films early in her career, collaborating with actors, musicians and like-minded creatives. They, along with family members and Niro herself, have become the characters in her stories. Her actors reference popular culture to establish common ground with her audience. At the same time, they act out allegories that ask deep questions about unresolved injustices. Throughout, Niro defines “actor” equally as the personas she creates in her artworks and those who act with agency to pursue justice and positive change.
Sleeping Warrior“The original title for this work was ‘The Gaze of the Native North American Male as He Sleeps on His Postcolonial Sofa.’ [laughter] But I thought it’s a little bit on the mean-spirited side, and I didn’t want to poke fun at Native American males, so I thought, I’ll just change it to ‘Sleeping Warrior.’ So I hired Jeremy Bomberry, who is my model. He was a great model during the series, and I just had him dress in these different outfits and try to take the same pose. You have this vision of being way up in the sky and being this businessman, and I wanted to create this sense that he’s a warrior, like a soldier. And then he’s in a cowboy hat here and just maybe he’s a cowboy. I have used the different clothes that are in the other images and I’ve added them into the composition. We could take these clothes and put them on the sleeping warrior as he’s lying there. Yeah, I was just being very playful with this.”
— Shelley Niro
“Warrior Dreams of Hunting,” 2012 (2022 reprint); color inkjet print; 44" x 64". Collection of the artist.
Courtesy of Shelley Niro
“Dressing Warrior,” 2012 (2022 reprint); color inkjet print; 44" x 64". Collection of the artist.
Courtesy of Shelley Niro
“’This Land Is Mime Land’ was made in 1992 and it’s a series of triptychs, and this one is called ‘500 Year Itch.’ And the first image in the triptych is Marilyn Monroe, the middle image is of my family, and the third image is of me just dressed very plainly. So I just wanted to create this energy around contemporary, historical, family, all that sort of thing.”
— Shelley Niro
Niro coyly poses in a blonde wig as a fan’s breeze lifts her dress, spoofing the well-known scene in the movie "The Seven Year Itch," starring Marilyn Monroe. Niro’s title is a wry comment on the 500th-anniversary celebrations of Christopher Columbus’s “discovery” of the Americas in 1492 and the hundreds of years of colonialism that followed.
“Five Hundred Year Itch,” 1992; hand-tinted gelatin silver prints in hand-drilled mat board; 37" x 22". National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
Courtesy of Shelley Niro
“This Land Is Mime Land,” printed 1992; hand-tinted gelatin silver prints in hand-drilled mat board; 37" x 22". National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
Courtesy of Shelley Niro
Relations
Niro has often enlisted her family members as subjects: her mother, daughters, nieces and granddaughter. In doing so, she references the Haudenosaunee system of matrilineal kinship and how it organizes personal obligations and responsibilities. The web of relations to one’s ancestors, peers and descendants fixes personal identity within the context of community. Some of her most intimate works emphasize the primacy of family relations and their lasting imprint across generations. These images evoke universal themes of family strength and endurance as well as maternal hope for its security.
Ceremonies“In ‘Ceremonies,’ I think I use the center image as the inspiration for the work. This woman is my father’s grandmother, and he talked about her all the time. And so by him telling us what she thought about stuff, it kind of stays with you. And this is the only image that we have of her. It sort of invokes these memories of his life with her. And then the second image is—and they, meaning my nieces, who are on both ends of this piece, they went with him to ceremonies, powwows and to church as well. After I took these photos, I took them to the mall and we got ice cream and I bought them a Bryan Adams CD. In ‘Ceremonies’ itself, like, I’m creating my own ceremony with my nieces, acknowledging them, and I think it’s also kind of celebrating them in a really small, minuscule way.”
— Shelley Niro
Niro posed her nieces to mimic an old photograph of their great-grandmother. The accompanying text describes intergenerational experiences—walking together to church or going out for ice cream—as kinds of ceremonies.
“Ceremonies,” 1992; gelatin silver print; 23.5" x 41.5". Indigenous Art Collection, Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada.
Courtesy of Indigenous Art Collection, Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada
Featuring the artist’s mother and daughters, this work represents the transfer of social, cultural and personal values from one generation to another. Intricate beadwork highlights women’s artistic labor and passing knowledge forward while the turtle references Niro’s clan to emphasize her matriarchal relations.
“Time Travels through Us,” 1999; gelatin silver print, cotton and beaded mat work, silver painted wood frame; 37" x 33". National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
Courtesy of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa