Lita Fontaine | Winyan
to
Winnipeg Art Gallery | Qaumajuq 300 Memorial Blvd, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3C 1V1
![Lita Fontaine, “Purple Sweetgrass,” 2023 Lita Fontaine, “Purple Sweetgrass,” 2023](https://www.gallerieswest.ca/downloads/32850/download/Lita%20Fontaine.%20Purple%20Sweetgrass%2C%202023.%20Mixed%20media%20on%20wood%20panel.%E2%81%A0.jpg?cb=c5d7e970d31e07c3cf4120356ec09983&w={width}&h={height})
Lita Fontaine, “Purple Sweetgrass,” 2023
mixed media on wood panel (courtesy of the Gallery)
Winyan [wee-yahn] (the Dakota word for “woman”) is a solo survey exhibition of Dakota/Anishinaabe/Metis artist Lita Fontaine. Bringing together both seminal and recent work, this exhibition honours the career of a beloved Treaty 1 artist. Fontaine’s work centers and celebrates the beauty of Indigenous femininities as a resistance to heteropatriarchal and colonial practices that often relegate them to the periphery and render them vulnerable to violence.
Adopting a critical Indigenous feminist lens, Fontaine’s work incorporates symbols of assimilation and gender-discriminatory policies while mobilizing her love for her sisters, matriarchs and Dakota culture to create collage, drawing, dresses, and large medallion-shaped paintings embellished with berry and floral motifs, the Morning Star, and allusions to Sky Woman.
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![WAG-Qaumajuq RGB LB.jpg WAG-Qaumajuq RGB LB.jpg](https://www.gallerieswest.ca/downloads/31979/download/WAG-Qaumajuq%20RGB%20LB.jpg?cb=da6e32931de6db9affc030f8ac309a09&w={width}&h={height})