Susan Blight is an

Anishinaabe The Anishinaabeg (adjectival: Anishinaabe) are a group of culturally related Indigenous peoples present in the Great Lakes region of Canada and the United States. They include the Ojibwe (including Saulteaux and Oji-Cree), Odawa, Potawat ...

visual artist, filmmaker, and arts educator from

Couchiching First Nation The Couchiching First Nation ( oj, Gojijiing Anishinaabeg) is a Saulteaux First Nation band government in the Canadian province of Ontario, who live on the Couchiching 16A and Agency 1 reserves in the Rainy River District near Fort Frances ...

. Her work, especially her public art throughout the city of

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central C ...

, often explores themes of "personal and cultural identity and its relationship to space". In 2016, the City of Toronto placed several street signs with Anishinaabe names throughout a neighborhood as a response to the Ogimaa Mikana Project co-founded by Blight.

Education

Blight holds a Master of Fine Arts in Integrated Media from the

University of Windsor , mottoeng = Goodness, Discipline and Knowledge , established = , academic_affiliations = CARL, COU, Universities Canada , former_names = Assumption College (1857-1956)Assumption University of Windsor (1956-1963) , type = Public universi ...

, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in

Photography Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employe ...

and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in

Film studies Film studies is an academic discipline that deals with various theoretical, historical, and critical approaches to cinema as an art form and a medium. It is sometimes subsumed within media studies and is often compared to television studies. ...

from the

University of Manitoba The University of Manitoba (U of M, UManitoba, or UM) is a Canadian public research university in the province of Manitoba.Ontario Institute for Studies in Education The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto (OISE/UT) is Canada's only all-graduate institute of teaching, learning and research, located in Toronto, Ontario. It is located directly above the St. George subway st ...

Career

Blight's interdisciplinary work includes projects that combine

public art Public art is art in any media whose form, function and meaning are created for the general public through a public process. It is a specific art genre with its own professional and critical discourse. Public art is visually and physically acce ...

and

culture, language, and history. In 2008, Susan Blight was featured in a group photograph exhibition at the Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography. During the early 2010s, Blight co-hosted a radio show, ''Indigenous Waves''. In 2013, Blight and colleague Hayden King co-founded the Ogimaa Mikana Project, an artist collective that reclaims Indigenous place names for

's streets by posting billboards with Anishinaabemowin phrases around the city and pasting stickers with Anishinaabemowin names on street signs. She described one billboard in

Parkdale, Toronto Parkdale is a neighbourhood and former village in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, west of downtown. The neighbourhood is bounded on the west by Roncesvalles Avenue, on the north by the CP Rail line where it crosses Queen Street and Dundas Street. It ...

, as "reminding people of the 15,000 year ndigenoushistory here in Toronto and to affirm our relationship to our language, which is part of our spiritual presence, our political presence, our governance, our health..." in response to the neighborhood's rapid gentrification and loss of its indigenous inhabitants. Three years later, the City of Toronto and a local business group collaborated with Ogimaa Mikana to place several official Anishinaabe street signs at the north end of

The Annex The Annex is a neighbourhood in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The traditional boundaries of the neighbourhood are north to Dupont Street, south to Bloor Street, west to Bathurst Street and east to Avenue Road. The City of Toronto recognizes ...

neighborhood, with Blight and King as advisers. In 2018, Ogimaa Mikana participated in the exhibition ''Soundings: An exhibition in Five Parts'' curated by Candice Hopkins and Dylan Robinson. They created an outdoor public installation entitled ''Never Stuck'', a vinyl transfer installed on Mackintosh-Corry Hall at Queen's University main campus.

References

External links

ImagineNATIVE 2011 Lift MenteeSusan Blight: Guided by Streams

Big Ideas in Art and Culture: Susan Blight
{{DEFAULTSORT:Blight, Susan Year of birth missing (living people) Living people University of Windsor alumni University of Manitoba alumni First Nations women Canadian women artists Artists from Ontario Ojibwe people