Lita Fontaine

Lita Fontaine is a Dakota, Anishinaabe and Métis Winnipeg-based artist, an active member of the Winnipeg arts community and the co-founder of Urban Shaman Gallery, one of the first Indigenous founded and-run art galleries in Canada. After a long career in arts education, she retired from the Seven Oaks School division as artist-in-residence. Fontaine’s pedagogical background informs her art practice, which brings together cultural, linguistic, musical, ceremonial and aesthetic knowledges that all converge in “Winyan,” Fontaine’s second solo exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG), curated by Fox Lake Cree Nation member and assistant curator of Indigenous Art at the WAG, Marie-Anne Redhead.

Fontaine’s exhibition resonates with an energy, spirit and pulse both metaphorical and literal. “Winyan” is the Dakota word for woman, which is a strong unifying theme. When entering the gallery space, the visitor hears a faint heartbeat and is welcomed by three female figures in bold and bright regalia, with floral patterned dresses in pink, red and purple, neckerchiefs, studded belts, a floral embroidered sash and a button hidden on the back of one dress of a medicine wheel that reads “United to end racism.”

At the heart of Lita Fontaine’s solo exhibition is the sound of a pulsing rhythm that grows increasingly stronger the farther a visitor travels through the exhibition. The heartbeat of A Woman’s Drum (4th Resurrection), 2023, accompanies a large drum surrounded by red walls and benches where people can gather. “Winyan” is not billed as a retrospective, but this particular drum work is a fourth incarnation, with its origin story starting as her MFA thesis project, then shown at her first solo exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, “Without Reservation,” curated by Cathy Mattes in 2001, and at La Biennale d’art contemporain autochtone (BACA) in Montreal in 2018. Fontaine made these drums to protest the cultural traditions that did not give women a place at the drum in ceremonies, and, in doing so, confronted patriarchal systems. Rosanna Deerchild wrote about Lita Fontaine’s work in an essay, “Tribal Feminism is a Drum Song,” in 2012. Fontaine has spoken about how the drum is considered female, and about her anguish at being separated from her mother— the drumbeat taking on the beat of a mother’s heart. Indigenous/ tribal feminism in the ’80s and ’90s broke the taboos of questioning and critically discussing complex issues involving colonial, racist and sexist influences on traditional culture, including lateral violence. The artists engaged in tribal feminism were considered controversial and avantgarde, but as the Red Dress Day and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and Two-Spirit (MMIWG2S+) movements continue to gain momentum, we can better appreciate the labour and dedication of artist activists like Lita Fontaine.

On the curved red walls around the drum are photographs depicting the four healing medicines and the MMIWG2S+ vigil for Marcedes Myran. Photos of Camp Marcedes, an encampment on the grounds of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg, speak to a watershed moment in Manitoba when dedicated protestors and encampments demanded that authorities search the Brady Road landfill for the remains of Marcedes Myran and Morgan Harris. They were murdered in 2022 by a serial killer who targeted Indigenous women. The tragedy was politicized when the Manitoba Conservative Party’s campaign promised not to search the landfill. The New Democratic Party’s campaign, however, did promise to search the landfill, a promise that was kept when Wab Kinew was elected premier of Manitoba in 2024. A Woman’s Drum (4th Resurrection) is a powerful installation in all its components; it speaks to femicide, misogyny and the ongoing violence faced by Indigenous women in a way that holds space for pain while enabling healing and justice.

The heavy topics confronted in the heart of the exhibition are poignantly contrasted with the surrounding playful, optimistic Barbiecore coloured walls in pinks and purples with Fontaine’s dresses, prints, drawing and mixed-media paintings in the same joyous palette. The “Saηksaηnića” series (Dakota for dress), 2024, explores the form of a traditional dress as more than just a garment but as a source of spirituality containing clouds from the prairie skies, medicine from the fields, feathers from the air, and the safety and structure of a shelter—a complete universe unto itself. The “Saηksaηnića” series speaks to the strength, resilience and beauty of Indigenous women and two-spirit people—both in their beings and creations. Lita Fontaine has described herself as a living, breathing medicine wheel, having learned how to find a balance within herself that resonates throughout her work and the exhibition. “My Medicine,” the medicine wheel series of mixed-media paintings on wood panels and prints, is ornate, intricate and mesmerizing in its repetitive patterns. It draws the visitor in to identify the inlaid elements ranging from glittering dollar-store gilded butterflies and hearts, which speak to girlhood, innocence and healing, to medicines such as cedar and sweetgrass.

The chasm between trauma, fear, pain and injustice at the heart of the exhibition and the bold, joyful strength and beauty in the artworks and colours chosen to envelop the space is united by the healing heartbeat of the drum. The wound and the medicine are presented together. Redhead and Fontaine have produced a much-needed but seldom seen powerful celebration of Indigenous feminisms. The activist artworks and the decolonial exhibition design create a healing portal, an alternate reality to the usual props and theatrics of Western art and colonial institutional spaces. “Winyan,” with its bright colours, living artworks and vibrational space, is in sharp contrast to a different exhibition in an adjoining gallery with dark lighting, grey walls and ornate oil paintings in gilded frames. This comparison creates a striking tension between what was and what could or will be. ❚

“Winyan” was exhibited at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Winnipeg, from July 5, 2024, to May 17, 2025.

Dr. Stacey May Koosel is a curator, critic and art history professor at IshKaabatens Waasa Gaa Inaabateg Department of Visual Art at Brandon University. She is the coordinator of the Indigenous Art Intensive at UBC Okanagan, and specializes in Indigenous contemporary art. She is a Citizen of the Manitoba Métis Federation, Grand Valley Local, in Brandon, Manitoba.