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Studio Sixty Six – Major News. We are pleased to announce (re)mix, an exhibition of work by Barry Ace in partnership with Heffel Galleries.

Exhibition dates: May 21 – June 29, 2024

Opening Reception: May 23, 6-9 pm (Invitation)

Heffel is the preeminent institution championing fine arts in Canada, and we are thrilled to work together to showcase Barry Ace, one of Ottawa’s most important contemporary visual artists.

Barry Ace is a practising visual artist and currently lives in Ottawa. He is a debendaagzijig (citizen) of M’Chigeeng First Nation, Odawa Mnis (Manitoulin Island), Ontario, Canada. Ace’s work embraces the impact of the digital age and how it exponentially transforms and infuses Anishinaabeg culture (and other global cultures) with new technologies and new ways of communicating. His work attempts to harness and bridge the precipice between historical and contemporary knowledge, art and power, while maintaining a distinct Anishinaabeg aesthetic connecting generations.

Ace’s early work Super Phat Nish is a series addressing urban Indigenous experience, through the creation of a popular culture icon. Based on the Anishinaabe mythological trickster Nanabozho, SPN is a self-reflexive personification constantly transforming to engage, critique, and indiginize normative settler imagery. The shape-shifting SPN can be perceived as humorous and ironic, yet simultaneously, there is a subversive subtext that levels cultural critique against dominant narratives. SPN reclaims stereo-typical representations to challenge negative racial portrayals through a repositioning that coalesces with contemporary Indigenous urbanity. ‘Super Phat’ (cool and hip) combines with ‘Nish’ (cajoling street-smart term for Anishinaabe) to reference belonging and tribalism.

Ace is featured in the upcoming touring exhibition from the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina, Radical Stitch, curated by Sherry Farrell Racette, Michelle LaVallee, and Cathy Mattes. Radical Stitch opens at the National Gallery of Canada on Friday, May 17, 2024.

For available works at Studio Sixty Six: Studio Sixty Six

Images:

1. Gwiiwzens Dreamed of Spirit Horses, mixed media, on verso signed and dated 2023, 12 x 3 3/4 x 33 1/2 in
2. Gwiiwzens Dreamed of Spirit Horses (detail)
3. Bloodline Triptych (#3, #4, #6), digital output, capacitors, resistors, light-emitting diodes, beads and acrylic on paper, signed and dated 2020, 7 x 15 in
4. Photo of Barry Ace by Jasmin Daigle (2023)