The Red Shift: Forming a Contemporary Indigenous Art Space

It’s been over a decade since The Red Shift Gallery closed its doors, but the warmth with which it’s spoken about makes it feel much more recent. There is a longing for what Red Shift was that I can’t say I’ve heard expressed about other galleries. 

Red Shift operated for five years (January 2006 to November 2010) in Saskatoon’s Riversdale neighbourhood, providing a space for contemporary Indigenous art in northern Saskatchewan. They showed a remarkable roster of artists, both those who were well established as well as relatively unknown artists who have since gone on to experience national recognition. This was due, undoubtedly, to the vision, skill, and hard work of Red Shift’s co-founders, Felicia Gay and Joi Arcand. I believe it is also because Red Shift was an Indigenous space—one guided by Indigenous values. This difference, between a space that shows Indigenous art and a space that is Indigenous, is one I’ve been trying to sort out in my own practice for a while now. 

A couple years after Red Shift closed, two friends and I opened Void Gallery in Saskatoon. Like Red Shift, we placed an emphasis on supporting emerging artists and community-engaged projects. But we were never part of our community the way Red Shift was, and I think this is because Red Shift was governed by Indigenous values more deeply. Felicia and Joi are connected to their communities: Felicia to Cumberland House, Joi to Muskeg Lake Cree Nation. I am Métis, but, due to intergenerational traumas within my family, I grew up largely disconnected from my culture. 

I offer my background in part to ground my relationship to this story and in part because, as I’ve come to learn, discussing our heritage is how we, as Indigenous Peoples, introduce ourselves when meeting for the first time. In writing about Red Shift, trying to understand how it embodied Indigenous values, I’ve had to think critically about my own processes. I’ve had to resist the urge to break this story down into key topics and present them in neatly organized sections. I was reminded of the value of story within Indigenous culture by artist Linda Young, who also worked with me as a Knowledge Keeper as I wrote this article. Presenting Red Shift’s story provides an opportunity for “Indigenous storywork,” a term coined by Jo-ann Archibald Q’um Q’um Xiiem to emphasize the role not only of the storyteller but of the story listener in understanding and pulling meaning from the story.¹

Like so many of us who are Indigenous, Red Shift embodied a duality. It developed and showcased critically important and influential exhibitions while acting within an Indigenous worldview. To understand Red Shift, you have to see through two lenses at once: a contemporary art world lens and an Indigenous lens.²

Like those old red and blue 3D glasses from my childhood, if you only look through one lens, you only see part of the image. But if you can manage to see through both, a three-dimensional world comes alive in a way that has to be lived to be understood. That is the magic of Red Shift. It showed what contemporary art could be if housed within an Indigenous space. 

Because what follows is a story, I think it’s important to introduce the individuals before we get started. In addition to Joi and Felicia, you’ll hear from artists Cindy Baker, Michel Boutin, Ruth Cuthand, Sherry Farrell Racette, Faye HeavyShield, Michèle Mackasey, Adrian Stimson, and Linda Young. At times I’ve removed the narrative and left only their voices so, as much as possible, it feels like you are in a room with them. Red Shift was the people who made it. 

I hope you can take from this story what you need and that, maybe, it can be the pair of 3D glasses that lets you fully see the magic of Red Shift. 

Felicia and Joi met when they were undergraduates at the University of Saskatchewan, Felicia in Art History and Joi in Fine Art. As she was completing her degree, Felicia became aware of two intertwined issues. She wanted to “situate herself and support contemporary Indigenous art practice,” but didn’t see opportunities to do so. She also recognized how difficult it was for Indigenous artists to move past the emerging stages of their careers, which she felt was predominantly due to a lack of exhibition opportunities. Both issues were related to a huge gap within the Canadian contemporary art ecology—there were no exhibition spaces for contemporary Indigenous art in northern Saskatchewan. 

Tribe Inc, an artist-run centre that promoted contemporary Indigenous artists within mainstream galleries and institutions, worked to address many of the barriers that Indigenous artists faced. Felicia was employed as an Administrative Assistant for Tribe while she and Joi developed their vision for Red Shift, and Tribe provided both mentorship and an organizational model. As Adrian Stimson, one of Tribe’s longtime board members, expressed, “you mentor a lot of people over the years, and you hope that something develops out of it, and Felicia… it’s just been really great to see her trajectory overall.” But Tribe didn’t have a physical gallery. 

Felicia and Joi quickly found a space in Saskatoon’s Riversdale neighbourhood, a former Chinese restaurant on 20th Street West. The commercial street is mostly made up of locally owned businesses and is a busy pedestrian area. The neighbourhood is also home to the largest population of Indigenous Peoples in the city.³

AKA artist-run and PAVED Arts, Saskatoon’s oldest artist-run centres, had recently bought a building together on the same street, only a couple blocks down. As Felicia explained, “knowing artist-run-centre culture and how they often would situate themselves within core neighbourhoods really interested me.” Artist-run centres can be exclusionary, and Red Shift provided assistance for artists and members of the neighbourhood who wanted to show their work within those spaces. 

Red Shift was part of its community from the start. Joi shared stories about raising money for the gallery—from her kokum making bannock and chili and helping sell it at the University of Saskatchewan, to a fundraiser that featured rapper Eekwol (Lindsay Knight). They hosted a successful art auction where artworks were donated by, as Joi described, “local art stars, who weren’t art stars then,” like Wally Dion. These efforts allowed those who were part of Red Shift’s community to contribute and feel a sense of ownership. And other artists and arts administrators became involved in Red Shift early on as well. Wally and Michèle both worked gallery hours as volunteers so the doors could be open all week. And Cindy, who was Program Coordinator at AKA during Red Shift’s early years, provided grant writing and administrative mentorship. Throughout its five years, Red Shift was guided by a board composed of Indigenous artists and community members, mostly women, who Joi called, “a great group of art aunties.” 

According to Cindy, Red Shift opened at “a really specific time in artist-run-centre history.” Artist-run centres were born in the ‘70s out of an anti-establishment desire to circumvent traditional art spaces. As Cindy explained, “the community started saying, ‘why are institutions only showing dead white guys?’” However, by the early 2000s, most had themselves become institutionalized. This led to another bubbling-up of new spaces during Red Shift’s time. While new spaces were being created, there often wasn’t funding to support them. As Cindy explained, “You knew there was no money from the arts councils for the most part to put into new organizations because the pot is only so big, and it’s already been spoken for, and to kick someone else out of the pool is a process.” This has meant that the world of artist-run centres has been slow to change, and since most of the people who had the means, access, and connections to start artist-run centres in the ‘70s were white, artist-run centres have remained disproportionately white to the present day. As Ruth lamented, “there has to be a shake-up of some kind within that system.” 

Currently, funding bodies are making efforts to address inequities, but during Red Shift’s time there was little opportunity for new organizations to move into core funding. Instead, Red Shift existed off project grants, which allowed them to pay artists presentation fees but did not provide operational support, such as rent, facilities, or staff. Joi worked a 9-to-5 during the week while tending to the gallery on nights and weekends. Felicia, though she took on the full-time responsibilities of Gallery Director while also a young mom, never paid herself. 

Everyone I spoke with described how welcoming Red Shift was. When I asked Felicia what made it this way, her answer surprised me: the architecture. The gallery had two large storefront windows that faced 20th Street, and she described how many handprints there were on the window: “People liked watching—Michèle would be doing her studio in the front window, or Wally doing his stuff in the back, and people would be looking in and checking it out, and eventually they would come in [and] we would just shoot the shit.” Ruth agreed: “I think what really helped Red Shift was the fact that it was a storefront, so if you were walking by and you looked through the windows, you’d see all this great art.” And as other artists who were involved with Red Shift explained, when visitors did walk in, they were met with warmth. 

Michel: “It was really generated on kindness.”

Sherry: “The place had such a nice atmosphere. It was really welcoming.”

Michèle: “I remember tons of laughs.” 

For Faye, the warmth with which Red Shift operated was an embodiment of its Indigenous values: “The feeling of sustenance, hospitality, I really see that that’s what is at the core of Indigenous community. And [Red Shift] really lived those values.” As she described, when someone came to Red Shift, they were welcomed as you would welcome a visitor to your home. Within this discussion of Indigenous values, Michel spoke about care and humility, explaining that Red Shift “was based on an individual caring for who was there. The physicality. And I think that’s what was important, to bring a physicality to Indigenous thought and to Indigenous contemporary art.” 

Where Western worldview emphasizes individual freedom and individual success, Indigenous worldview includes values of responsibility and care.⁴ When I spoke about these values with Faye, she was careful to add reciprocity, a value so important because care without reciprocity can become saviourism. Care without reciprocity leads to community outreach projects built on hierarchies that seek to educate and enlighten, or what Michel calls “outreach to disadvantaged youth nonsense.” Care without reciprocity does not respect the knowledges that have existed on this land since time immemorial, or how much we all have to give to and gain from each other. 

While discussing Red Shift within a broadness of Indigenous values, Michel did want to pinpoint that he saw the northern values of a number of those involved evident in the way Red Shift operated: “What was being reflected in that openness, in that friendliness and whatnot, was also the way of life of northern Saskatchewan, northern Canada. That’s the worldview that dominates up there.” For Michel, it was nice to see “the heart of the north, the spirit of the northern communities” in Saskatoon. 

For Faye, Red Shift broke down barriers, meaning there was no separation between a person coming to view an exhibition and the artist, like there could be in other spaces. As she described, when an artwork is “up on a wall or up on a pedestal in a gallery, that’s a physical distance and that physical distance, a lot of times, especially with Indigenous/ non-Indigenous, it calls for translation, when there doesn’t need to be.” This can have a function of complicating things, when “it’s so much easier just to be.” Red Shift didn’t create artificial barriers or seek to separate artwork from its context. Within Indigenous culture, art is part of everyday life. As Faye explained, there is ceremony and special occasions, but when someone’s “making a pair of moccasins, you’re going through that same process that an artist is going through. You’re in touch with your material, you have a vision of who these moccasins are being made for, maybe it is for a special occasion, and so you’re putting yourself into that art. Same with even songs that were sung. Honour songs. Canada is so rich in all the different Indigenous languages that are there and everything that comes with that. It’s amazing. That’s a universe right there.” 

Red Shift’s warmth was also demonstrated in how it worked with artists and curated exhibitions. They rarely put out open calls. Rather, as Felicia explained, they brought in artists through a much slower and engaged process that involved “consultation first and then an invitation.” They would choose a theme, have a conversation with an artist about what it would mean for them, and then after this conversation would ask, “Would you like to be part of this? Do you see your work belonging to this project?” Or, as Sherry described it, “What have you got that speaks about this story that I’m interested in telling? But…not in a way that was limiting at all.” It wasn’t a selection process but rather a collaborative one, built out of relationships. 

The value of this curatorial approach can be seen in the work Linda Young created in response to an invitation. As Linda explained, “The first year Felicia started Red Shift Gallery, she curated an exhibition called ‘The Politics of Mother’ (2007) and invited me to be part of it. I agreed even though I didn’t really have anything prepared. But sometimes, when you get invited to work on an exhibition, it gives you an opportunity to start thinking about what stories to share, what’s happening in my life right now that needs to be worked out in my art practice and to be shared in the public space.” 

Linda had just finished her hearing as an Indian Residential student as part of the Alternative Dispute Resolution process, and that was the story that was in her consciousness. That piece has since been selected, along with a number of works from the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, by the Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities. ARTIVISM: The Atrocity Prevention Pavilion, in which art is transformed into a catalyst for social awareness regarding systemic violence, was shown in Venice as well as at the Canadian Museum of Human Rights. For Linda, “it has a life and continues to be useful as a narrative of my experience…that piece is my Residential School story.” And she wouldn’t necessarily have created that piece had Felicia not reached out and asked what might form if they worked together. 

Red Shift created space for a wide spectrum of Indigenous experience and artistic expression, not just work that fit into the narrow definitions of Indigeneity favoured by Western culture. One of the bodies of work Ruth showed as part of her solo exhibition at Red Shift, “Dis-Ease” (2010), was paintings about her experience growing up in a racist Southern Alberta town, and the role of the Mormon church. As she explained, they had been “overlooked because there was no overt Indigenous reference to them.” Adrian’s exhibition at Red Shift, “Buffalo Boy’s Confessional Indulgence,” featured a two-seater toilet outhouse, which, among other alterations, had a glory hole. He described how Red Shift was able to “accommodate all sorts of ideas, often some of them a little controversial” that other spaces wouldn’t be willing to take a chance on. 

Despite how loved Red Shift was and the passion of all those connected to it, the gallery closed on November 28, 2010. As part of Riversdale’s ongoing gentrification, the building had been sold to a new owner who was not interested in Red Shift remaining in the space. And, never having received operational funding, Red Shift was unable to weather this interruption until finding a new location. The loss was felt deeply. 

Ruth: “When there wasn’t funding for it, that was a really sad day for Indigenous artists and emerging artists. It had the potential to do so much and just wasn’t given the attention it should have been.”

Sherry: “It was very much for community and a sense of who that community was and what that community needed. And time for that kind of dialogue. I think sometimes the art scene can be kind of a closed shop. I think they offered an alternative to it.”

Michel: “It was a key spot and a key point in time. It was a changing point in Indigenous art and consciousness.”

Michèle: “It was everything to me to be able to be in there and work in there.” 

While the artists I spoke with expressed a longing for what Red Shift was, they also recognized how the momentum that Red Shift started continues. So many artists who got their start at Red Shift are now recognized nationally. As Michel Boutin pointed out, a lot of younger Indigenous artists received exposure in Saskatoon through Red Shift: “Something that some people don’t really know is that artists like Sonny Assu and Terence Houle showed there, like, early, early on in their careers, before they were anybody. [Red Shift was] bringing people up and bringing people in, and there’s nothing like that really happening anymore.” 

Indeed, the list of artists who showed at Red Shift is truly remarkable: Ruth Cuthand and Adrian Stimson (both Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts recipients), Christi Belcourt, Faye HeavyShield, and Sonny Assu and Wally Dion (both long-listed for the Sobey Art Award), among so many others.⁵ Has there been an artist-run centre that has shown a comparable list of artists in its first five years? 

And the momentum continues in the careers of Joi and Felicia, too. Following her time at Red Shift, Joi founded kimiwan, an Indigenous art magazine, and, among many accolades, was shortlisted for the Sobey Art Award in 2018. Felicia is currently a Curatorial Fellow with the MacKenzie Art Gallery while pursuing her PhD with the University of Regina. 

But for Felicia, Joi, and everyone involved, Red Shift being an Indigenous space was always most important. Red Shift made time for everyone who walked through their door. They maintained programming with Felicia’s home community of Cumberland House, whether that was holding workshops or residencies at Cumberland House or welcoming members of the community to the gallery for artist talks and tours. As Felicia described, “one day I’ll go back and live there, in my olden years, be a little old lady. And I’ll still be doing that work there.” 

While looking back at Red Shift’s truly amazing accomplishments, it becomes clear that the art world still has a lot of work to do to untangle itself from colonialism. The merit of Red Shift’s work was not recognized as it should have been during their time, and I believe the reason has to do with the Indigenous values that guided Red Shift and the differences in how they operated as a result. In Saskatoon, there’s often a lack of value placed on regional work. Those outside the community tend to be valued more than those within it. To understand, then, that Red Shift prioritized regional work, prioritized raising people up, is to understand that they placed community before their own careers. For Joi, she eventually had to step away when other opportunities took her to Vancouver. And for Felicia, she was still called “emerging” a decade into her practice. As she explains, “Because I was so situated within my community of Saskatoon and in the north, I wasn’t considered a valid curator.” This has changed in recent years as the quality of her work is starting to be recognized the way that it should, both by Saskatchewan’s arts community and nationally, but this recognition likely would have happened a lot sooner had Red Shift not placed the emphasis they did on community. 

To return to the metaphor I started with, I hope this story helps you see through those 3D glasses. Red Shift maintained an Indigenous worldview and, in doing so, helped so many artists build their careers. While they conceptualized and developed exhibitions that garnered national attention, they made time for everyone who came into the space. The work of Red Shift was rooted in community. As Michel described, it was “an all-my-relations living space.” While so many try to climb as high as they can as quickly as they can, Felicia and Joi knew that path was based on hierarchy. They chose to form a horizontal network of reciprocal connections. Like the prairies compared to the mountains, these connections are harder to see. Sometimes others don’t notice them until the structure has grown so big it’s impossible to miss. 

I mentioned to Felicia how it wasn’t lost on me that she and Joi, two Indigenous women, started Red Shift, and how so often social movements are led by women of colour who face intersectional barriers. She agreed, describing how women had laid the groundwork for Red Shift: “If you look at Daphne Odjig or Faye HeavyShield or Ruth Cuthand, these women, in their own ways, have opened up doors for us, and we all stand on their shoulders; not just women—all of us do.” 

I know the ground below us is a little sturdier because of the foundation Red Shift has formed. 

Métis artist Michael Peterson co-founded Void Gallery in Saskatoon/Treaty 6, which for close to a decade created space for emerging artists and people who have historically been excluded from artistic discussion. He currently co-runs Shop Cold Pizza, an art and apparel brand that works with artists across Canada to design, print, and sell their goods. 

1. Jo-ann Archibald Q’um Q’um Xiiem et al. eds., Decolonizing Research: Indigenous Storywork as Methodology (London: Zed Books, 2019).
2. Without inferring alignment with the framework, I would like to acknowledge the similarity of this statement to the Mi’kmaq methodology of Two-Eyed Seeing, defined by Mi’kmaq Elder Mr. Albert Marshall of Eskasoni First Nation as “learning to see from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous knowledges and ways of knowing, and from the other eye with the strengths of Western knowledges and ways of knowing, and to using both these eyes together, for the benefit of all” (Bartlett, C., Marshall, M. & Marshall, A. “Two-Eyed Seeing and other lessons learned within a co-learning journey of bringing together indigenous and mainstream knowledges and ways of knowing,” J Environ Stud Sci 2, (2012): 335. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-012-0086-8).
3. Felicia Gay, The Red Shift: A Contemporary Aboriginal Curatorial Praxis, 44, https://harvest.usask.ca/bitstream/handle/10388/etd-06302011-093701/fgaythesis1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.
4. I do not want to imply there is only one Indigenous worldview, or to flatten differences among Indigenous Nations and cultures. It is my understanding that the term Indigenous is the one chosen most often by Indigenous Peoples in these lands currently known as Canada to refer to ourselves as a group. As Michel pointed out, we’re in an “individualist identity situation right now,” meaning a preference for referring to people’s individual nationhood rather than collective terms. However, as Red Shift was a gathering of people from numerous Indigenous Nations and cultures, I have chosen to use the term Indigenous to speak about ideas that “are not representative of any single First Nations, Métis, or Inuit culture, but…are representative of all to some degree” (All My Relations, Aboriginal Perspectives, 2004, 71–80).
5. The full list of artists and exhibitions is available in Felicia Gay’s master’s thesis, The Red Shift: A Contemporary Aboriginal Curatorial Praxis, starting on page 47.

This article is published in issue 39.1 of BlackFlash magazine. Get this issue