“Space is really important to Indigenous people. If we’re literally waiting to get our land back, maybe I can at least try to claim space in other ways,” says Métis-Saulteaux-Polish artist Dayna Danger. “I really want to challenge the ways in which our bodies have been consumed in a way that doesn’t feel consensual and that doesn’t feel like it’s authentic or that it’s our own.”
Danger blends themes of intimacy, care, gender and sexuality to reclaim art as spaces of survivance and thrivance for Indigenous peoples, and to take back space for women and gender-nonconforming people within Indigenous communities.
In June 2017, this Montreal-based artist will open her second solo exhibition, featuring the Big’Uns series, at Latitude 53 in Edmonton in collaboration with Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective. Danger’s work will also be featured in in the 2017 edition of the Queer Arts Festival in Vancouver this month, curated by Adrian Stimson.
In this studio-visit video, shot by Brittany Shepherd, Danger grants us access to a shoot for her recent “Queering Intimacy” show at Concordia University, and to her home studio where she completes her beadwork.—Lindsay Nixon, Indigenous editor-at-large
