Joi T Arcand hand picks the best of Ottawa for the Globe and Mail’s City Confidential feature

Big Deals - A small Ottawa gallery is helping move contemporary Indigenous art into major national Institutions.

Central Art Garage to participate in Art Toronto 2021 with artists Barry Ace, Joi, T Arcand, Michael Belmore, D’Andrea Bowie, Camal and Camille, Maura Doyle, Adrian Göllner, Craig Leonard, Bozica Radjenovic, and Frank Shebageget.

Armand Garnet Ruffo discusses Joi T Arcand’s piece ‘Never Surrender’ from her exhibition ᑿᔭᐢᐠ ᐅᑌᐦᑕᒼ at Central Art Garage for Queen’s University.

Joi T. Arcand’s new media installation pimiciwan pimatisowin 2020 marks the first time a Cree contemporary artist has had their work enter the NGV Collection. Arcand's placement of her piece, a blue neon sign set back into a wall cavity, subtly declares that the language wasn’t ‘lost’, but was instead taken, and Cree people are now here to reclaim it.

Joi T. Arcand’s ᐲᔦᓰᐤ ᐚᓴᑳᐦᐃᑲᐣ (PÎYÊSÎW WÂSKÂHIKAN), is a site specific installation in a dedicated Indigenous space within Edmonton's Stanley Milner Library built for ceremony and gatherings. Joi T Arcand is an artist known for working with Plains Cree syllabics, using her art to explore the colonial hierarchy of languages in the land we currently call Canada.

Joi T. Arcand’s most recognizable works are her neon signs of declarative statements in Plains Cree syllabics. Never Surrender, exhibited at Central Art Garage, is her latest work in this vein, translating lyrics from Corey Hart’s 1980s pop song. Through this process, Hart’s lyrics become an anthem of Indigenous sovereignty.

Joi T. Arcand is the Visual Artist-in-Residence at Harbourfront Centre.

“THE ONLY TONGUE IN VOGUE” is a site specific installation. The title refers to a future where Indigenous languages are once again “in vogue” on Indigenous land. Artist Joi Arcand Arcand is known for working with the Plains Cree syllabics, often in the form of signage.

SAW gallery's Nordic Lab promotes cultural exchanges between Indigenous people in circumpolar nations. The Nordic Lab welcomes their first artist-in-residence, Sobey Art Award-shortlisted artist Joi T. Arcand. Arcand took on a hybrid role with the gallery, becoming the Nordic Lab's first program director.

Àbadakone | Continuous Fire | Feu continuel at the National Gallery of Canada. Works by more than 70 Indigenous artists including Joi T Arcand and Ursula Johnson.

Mamanaw Pekiskwewina gathering is an all-day discussion with artists from Taskoch pipon pesim kah nipa muskoseya, nepin pesim eti pimachihew in conversation with knowledge keepers and elders.

In Joi T. Arcand’s solo exhibition “she used to want to be a ballerina.” Arcand suggests a way to exist and dream in a re-imagined world, while not forgetting her indigeneity.

To me, Arcand’s work is land and spirit medicine (maskihki), taking up space and commanding presence in materiality, form and location. Arcand honours the Indigenous grandparents by marking the space for Cree speakers and shifting the balance of power in colonial structures.

Joi T. Arcand is one of the five finalists for the 2018 Sobey Art Award. ᐁᑳᐏᔭᐋᑲᔮᓰᒧ (ekawiya akayasimo), 2017, on-site installation at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. A short video features her work exploring the Cree language, envisioning the language and the culture flourishing despite centuries of suppression by settler colonialism.

Joi T Arcand - Prix Sobey pour les arts 2018. Membre de la Nation crie de Muskeg Lake, en Saskatchewan (Traité no 6), Joi T. Arcand est actuellement artiste en résidence au Wanuskewin Heritage Park de Saskatoon.

What occurred at Beaux-arts during BACA was an intervention on said community. Joi T. Arcand’s The Beautiful NDN Super Maidens (2014) took up an entire wall alongside her NDN super-maiden trading cards.

Artist Joi T. Arcand, who is from the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation, presented a neon work entitled ᐁᑳᐏᔭ ᓀᐯᐃᐧᓯ (ekawiya nepewisi) (2017). Arcand embeds Cree syllabics, thus interpolating into the symbolic order (capitalism, patriarchy) a language for the most part readable only by the members of her own community.

Gallery 101 in partnership with ASINABKA proudly presents “Hot Culture,” an art show focused on Indigenous made fashion, textile and crafts, bringing together designers and creators working with traditional and contemporary materials.

Arcand has become known for creating public signage in Plains Cree syllabics. Arcand has said, as a person just walking down the street, I started to see the shapes of the syllables in traffic signs…So I just decided — what would the world look like through this lens?

In this exhibition Joi T. Arcand’s neon channel sign presents language as a medium of communication between Indigenous persons, but also as a potential tool for coalition-building outside of the Indigenous community.