Celebrated Canadian Indigenous artist Nadia Myre debuts a major U.S. solo exhibition this fall, featuring more than 40 works, including large-scale and never seen before pieces.
Nadia Myre: Analog/ues is on through Jan. 17, 2027 at the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey. The Montreal-based contemporary artist is an Algonquin member of the Kitigan Zibi Anishinaabeg First Nation.
In sculpture, video, and text-based works, Myre explores Indigenous and settler histories of North America. By reconfiguring administrative records like wampum belts, maps, museum archives, and the U.S. Declaration of Independence, she questions the narratives that shape our understanding of history.
In the new work “Axiomatic Choreography” (detail above), Myre starts with a poem inspired by the U.S. Declaration of Independence, translates it into Gregg shorthand and recreates the looping script in large clay tubes. The result turns familiar language into something most viewers can no longer easily read, changing everyone’s perspective. (See also the wall of tubes in the installation view at the top of the post)
Above, detail of Drift, Myre’s reimagining of the American flag.
For several decades, Nadia Myre has been rising in profile for her rich and diverse interdisciplinary practice, resulting in multiple international exhibitions and in 2025, a solo exhibition (Waves of Want) at the National Gallery of Canada. Hear more about her artistic approach in this four-minute video.
Myre’s acclaimed Indian Act installation, a long-term project that called on more than 200 friends, colleagues and strangers to help bead over all 56 pages of text in the Indian Act, the reviled federal legislation that governs the status of registered Indians and the management of reserve land. The act was mounted on cloth and sewn over with white and red beads. NOTE: Prime Minister Mark Carney is looking at “changing” the act, triggering widespread debate in all parts of Canada (see one recent news story here)
Nadia Myre is represented by the following galleries:
Blouin-Division – her artist page here
Macaulay + Co – her artist page here
Below: A previous feature on Myre’s activist art.
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I didn’t know shorthand, so had to be told the “translation.” A clever idea, well executed and as you point out, much more meaningful than merely clever. (Memories of another translation: Joyce Wieland’s panel of lipsticked mouths pronouncing the words of O Canada.)
I used that shorthand and recognized it. This was a beautiful and important post.