Krista Belle Stewart is a

First Nations First Nations or first peoples may refer to: * Indigenous peoples, for ethnic groups who are the earliest known inhabitants of an area. Indigenous groups *First Nations is commonly used to describe some Indigenous groups including: **First Natio ...

visual artist from

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. Stewart works in a variety of formats, using archival materials, photographs, and collage.

Early life

Stewart is from the

Upper Nicola Band The Upper Nicola Band is a First Nations band government in the Canadian province of British Columbia, located near the town of Merritt in the Nicola Country at Douglas Lake. Known in the Okanagan language as the Spaxomin, they are a member of ...

in the

British Columbia interior , settlement_type = Region of British Columbia , image_skyline = , nickname = "The Interior" , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = , subdivision_type1 = Province , subdivi ...

region. Stewart's mother Seraphine was the first First Nations public health nurse in British Columbia; she was the subject of a

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (french: Société Radio-Canada), branded as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian public broadcaster for both radio and television. It is a federal Crown corporation that receives funding from the government. ...

documentary in 1967.

Career

Stewart works with combinations of archival items, such as photographs and video, and various types of collage techniques and

fiber art Fiber art (fibre art in British spelling) refers to fine art whose material consists of natural or synthetic fiber and other components, such as fabric or yarn. It focuses on the materials and on the manual labor on the part of the artist as ...

. One of her earlier projects, ''Self Portrait on a Canning Lid'', worked with older photographic techniques, such as

tintype A tintype, also known as a melainotype or ferrotype, is a photograph made by creating a direct positive on a thin sheet of metal coated with a dark lacquer or enamel and used as the support for the photographic emulsion. Tintypes enjoyed their wi ...

, to create images referencing her cultural history and

ethnography Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject o ...

practices. Her 2014 installation piece, ''Motion and Moment Always,'' reproduced a historical image of chiefs from the Nisga'a First Nations on the British Columbia coast as a weaving, working with Vancouver weaver Ruth Scheuing. This piece is combined with items such as a bucket containing soil from Douglas Lake, where Stewart was raised, as well as other archival items highlighting women's roles in First Nations cultures. Stewart has had solo exhibitions at the SFU Galleries, Burnaby (2018–19), Nanaimo Art Gallery (2019), Kelowna Art Gallery (2016), and

Contemporary Art Gallery A contemporary art gallery is normally a commercial art gallery operated by an art dealer which specializes in displaying for sale contemporary art, usually new works of art by living artists. This approach has been called the "Castelli Method" ...

, Vancouver (2015). Group exhibitions include ''In Search of Expo 67,'' Musée d'Art Contemporain, Montreal (2017), ''Vancouver Special: Ambivalent Pleasures'' at the Vancouver Art Gallery (2016–17), ''Where Does it Hurt?,'' at Artspeak, Vancouver (2014), ''Music from the New Wilderness'', Western Front, Vancouver (2014), and ''Fiction/Nonfiction'', Esker Foundation, Calgary (2013). In 2019, Stewart's work ''Earthbound Mnemonic'' was featured on the BC Hydro Dal Grauer Substation in Vancouver as a feature of the Capture Photography Festival. Also in 2019, she was the recipient of the VIVA Award from the Jask and Doris Shadbolt Foundation.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stewart, Krista Belle Year of birth missing (living people) Living people First Nations artists Artists from British Columbia First Nations women artists